Long Fin Killie - Classic or Dud?

I just dug out my copy of Houdini because I've been listening to a lot of AR Kane lately and was reminded of LFK. I'm glad others noted the connection, I think for it's the vocals that made the association most immediately. The most amusing part of this is that when I originally picked up the Buttergut EP when it was originally released, I loved the music but found the vocals to be a complete turn-off. Now, the vocals and lyrics are one of the most compelling parts of the record for me. Who says people don't change?

Regardless, this is a completely classic album and it's a shame that it's so thoroughly out of print and unavailable. I never picked up the follow-up albums but just scored them from emusic.

How are Sutherland's novels?

If someone were to ask me right now, I'd name LFK as my favourite band, I think.

Please to be telling me if there are any other records out there that do what Amelia does?

PLEASE.

Also did Jamie Watson ever produce / engineer / record anyone else?

Join me in my LFK love, please...

and we go full-circle, for this is the thread on which I first alerted NS to cardiacs!

need to get hold of 'amelia' and 'valentino'. amazon it is.

Amelia might be their best.

I saw them open for Medicine, way back when...took a first date, she spent the whole set with her hands over her ears...there was no second date!

liked them lots..."medieval hip hop", the Wire wag said...

LFK, Laika, Pram, Moonshake, PJ Harvey, Stereolab...Too Pure was on a roll in those days, eh?

Hell yeah. And even some of the obscurer stuff still works -- Minxus, for instance. Great album.

not to mention Seefeel, Mouse On Mars, Th' Faith Healers, Jack, Electrane...such a range...affordable as imports, too...

ElectraLAne...but you knew that...

lol shall we tell him

no, he needs to find out the hard way

minxus were great, they got tagged as the poor man's pj harvey though. pity. minxus albums can be found in every bargain bin. when will luke stop making boring music with germans and make another bows album? will he ever?

Ooh, two new (to me, anyway) LFK singles arrived today in the mail - I only ordered them yesterday.

And it's Electrelane, kids.

BUT NOT ANYMORE BOOHOO

wut, no love for teh Voodoo Queens?

where did it all go pear-shaped with Too Pure? Hefner? Billy Mahonie? Murray the Hump? earlier, even? Seely? the execrable Jack?

hefner great through the first album. jack first album great. i think when seely came it was the end. now supposedly they are good again but they aren't really. the bands all seem so small and tinny in comparison.

Long Kill Fillie.

The first seely record was passable, but I agree that that was the beginning of the end of the unimpeachable excellence that was Too Pure circa 1992-95. I still listen to a good many of those records and many of them hold up well so I don't think it's just nostalgia.

As far as their current roster: with the end of Electrelane, I'm just not very interested. Tracey and the Plastics is just dire.

Bump.

Good gosh a superduperuber classic.

Every so often I think Amelie might be the greatest British rock record of the last... god, twenty years.

For some reason forgot how much I loved "The Heads of Dead Surfers" until yesterday.

That's the Mark E Smith one, right? Damn straight it rocks. I need to give this band a full appraisal at some point, if only to appease Southall.

Best band ever.

Got Amelia off eMusic a few months ago. Pretty good stuff. One of those records that so totally passed me by, it makes me question how much attention I was actually paying at the time. What the hell else did I miss? Was aware of the band too, it's like they were hiding in plain sight. Anyhow, 'Kismet' seems to be the song I'm listening to the most, wherein they take their basic thing and heat it right up so that eveything starts shimmering just a little in front of your ears.

Aye, Kismet's awesome; Amelia condenses their earlier work into really frenetic, highly intense packages. I love all three albums. There's a great handful of b-sides, too.

Something I wrote about Amelia a while ago:

http://whatwasitanyway.blogspot.com/2008/02/long-fin-killie-amelia.html

Jamie Watson, for reference, produced / engineered the first Snow Patrol album, before they were MOR bullshit.

I know Jamie, he lives up the street from me. Hate to be pedantic, but Grant Macn@mara did the engineering on the Snow Patrol thing.

I hate to do something quite so wankerish as this, but unless the sleevenotes are a lie, you're incorrect on this, Keith:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/IMG_8824.jpg

^^^this guy is bein' a bulldog today

It's cos I'm 30, innit.

and to think i never wished you happy birthday

happy birthday nick

there now be happy

happy happy happy

Hey Nick, no problem, and indeed it gives me a chance to explain how wankerish I was posting what I did. Happy birthday too!

Grant was my flatmate at the time, but it's Jamie's studio, so he understandably wanted to take the credits... He's done a bunch of things over the years, the Vaselines spring to mind, Idlewild too, but lots more. Grant certainly did a bunch of engineering on that record as I remember being in a pub with them after they'd all been 'at work'; however, I think my main point is a decade long beef about the Long Fin Killie thing, which Grant also did the engineering on... He did the remix of "Lipstick", which was the single, but wound up being credited as "programmed by Grant...", some way down the list from produced and engineered etc. which he was pretty pissed off by at the time, which I understand, as I watched him do it. So on occasion since then, I've tried to redress the balance!

Hope you had a great birthday.

i missed these guys back in the day. finally got houdini recently, and i'm amazed. maybe it's the mancunian accent, but it sounds like elbow bites them so hard it's almost criminal, like witchcraft and black sabbath

is luke sutherland over? the Music AM stuff was such a letdown.

He's moved into other work -- he collaborated on this production:

http://www.curious-seed.co.uk/

And apparently it won some attention at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year:

http://www.theskinny.co.uk/article/96637-its-a-jumble-out-there-found-wins-a-fringe-first

some of these guys' b-sides/EP tracks are really kicking my ass right now as I'm hearing them for the first time.

the coda of the original version of "Lipstick" is just about the eeriest 45-second snippet of music I've heard. I can understand why it wasn't included on such a propulsive album as Amelia, but I think I prefer it to the album version, if only for the moment when that massive feedback-y guitar tapers off and exposes the dissonant violin line that had been lurking deep in the mix and waiting for the right moment to unleash its horror.

the violin line toward the end of "Stacked", on the other hand, has sort of a country/folk/hoedown/(Dexys?) feel to it, and it's one of the few times that an LFK song ends on a less sinister note than it begins.

are there any other semi-rarities like these that weren't listed in keith's post upthread?

Really loved this band when they came out. Saw them in a club in Raleigh, NC and also at the Lollapalooza date they played in 1996. This song is my favorite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl55AFCtqKc

Great band. I stupidly sold my CDs ten years ago, and am having a helluva time finding albums #2 and 3 now, used or even just lossless files in the ether.

Will be being played tonight at Devon Record Club.

http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/long-fin-killie-amelia-round-15-nicks-choice/

NEO KILLFILING