V/A – There Must Be A Hole In Your Memory (Tribute to The Sound & Adrian Borland)
I’m guessing if you didn’t already know about Adrian Borland and The Sound, you wouldn’t even be here. No real need to go back down the road of ‘greatest overlooked UK artist of the eighties’, ‘the only real contemporary of Joy Division or the ‘tragic suicide’. That’s a well trodden path. I’ll put a link to another article if you want the bigger tribute. This, folks, is the musical tribute, a CD of cover versions by well disposed artist/friends and another tick in the box for crowdfunding.
What is a tribute album for exactly? I suppose uber fans of the subject matter fall into two camps. There are those obsessives who want every version of every song by every act going and there are those who see covers as some kind of insult, sullying the memory of their icon. Well, take a look at the title. There must be a hole in your memory, a line from The Sound’s ‘Total Recall’ which taps back into the notion of The Sound being criminally overlooked to the point of being virtually written out of UK music history altogether. We must stand against such revisionism and redress the balance. As such, we must support initiatives like the Adrian Borland Documentary (also at the crowdfunding stage so please support this via the link provided), the album re-releases (such as The Sound Box Set of a few months ago) and of courses this tribute record. Obviously the versions here are not Adrian Borland’s poignant originals. Nobody is trying to kid themselves or anybody else because this isn’t about competition. This is celebration. It’s music’s equivalent of raising a glass to toast one of the greats.
What of the record itself?. I believe there may be various editions which would make logical sense in line with crowdfunding philosophy. I have a single disc version with 17 songs. The choices are good. Plenty of The Sound classics to be found here. The artists are also interesting although I confess to knowing few of them. And here’s the thing dear reader, that, for me, is the true purpose of any tribute record and indeed compilations generally. You might come here because of The Sound and Adrian, or you might come because you already love one of the acts, but the result is exposure to an hour of brilliant, diverse music by artists you might otherwise have missed.
It’s not about Adrian.
It’s all about Adrian.
This is a terrific album, very easy to play from start to finish and I almost made a policy decision to avoid mentioning specific artists. Why? This isn’t a ‘track by track’ and I wouldn’t want to upset the other acts. Yet truthfully the whole collection is a worthy tribute and deserves success. If I have to make special mention I might pick out a couple. The covers here fall into two distinct groups, a) those that try to be ultra faithful to the original material and b) those that reinterpret Adrians work in a completely different style. Of the first set, Elliott Wheeler transforms ‘Winter’ into a thing of pale frosted beauty, all static and loops, Adrian would certainly have approved. Of the reinterpretation crowd The Temporary Thing turn ‘Missiles’ into a surfer Arcade Fire while Dalmasy’s acoustic take on ‘Iron Years’ gets beneath the skin to the very essence of that song. It is sweetly sung and very moving. I don’t believe I ever felt the quite lyrics so deeply. All perfect examples of why we should support this record.
There must be a hole in your memory is a limited edition release created to support the making of the film, Walking In The Opposite Direction. Please support this project in any way that you can. Information via the links below.
[sic] Magazine tribute to The Sound.