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(2020) The The – See Without Being Seen
Review:
See Without Being Seen is the ‘lost’ first album by the teenage Matt Johnson, now reissued by Johnson as a The The long-player. This was originally ‘released’ last year for ‘Cassette Store Day’ (the original was put out on tape in 1979) but is now issued on CD with three bonus tracks (in addition to the three extra instrumentals that were added to cassette re-release). Comes with 36-page booklet and is packaged like Johnson’s ‘Cineola’ releases. The The is the guise of Matt Johnson, a mercurial singer/songwriter whose music has run the gamut from dance-pop to country. Born August 15, 1961, in London, Johnson was raised in the flat above his father’s pub, the Two Puddings, a haven for well-known celebrities and criminals; he also became exposed to music at the nightclubs and dancehalls owned by his uncle, where he saw performers like Howlin’ Wolf, the Kinks, and Muddy Waters. Johnson formed his first band, Roadstar, when he was 11; at the age of 15, he was hired as a tea boy for the DeWolfe music publishing company, and within three years, he was working in their recording studio as an assistant engineer. After the demise of the duo the Marble Index in 1979, Johnson formed the first incarnation of The The with synth player Keith Laws; after playing their debut gig opening for Scritti Politti, the group issued its first single, “Controversial Subject,” on the 4AD label in 1980. A year later, contractual obligations forced Johnson to issue the LP Burning Blue Soul under his own name; that year, he also recorded as a guitarist with the band the Gadgets, and The The contributed a track to the Some Bizzare Album compilation.
In 1982, The The — now essentially a Johnson solo project, backed by a revolving coterie of musicians — recorded the album The Pornography of Despair, which a dissatisfied Johnson chose not to release; a 1983 single recorded with Orange Juice’s Zeke Manyika, “This Is the Day,” formed the centerpiece of The The’s proper debut, 1983’s Soul Mining, an excursion into dance-flavored pop. Illness sidelined Johnson for much of the following year, and The The did not return until 1986’s Infected, an eclectic commentary on the state of Britain in the modern world. Recorded with the aid of talents like Neneh Cherry, Art of Noise’s Anne Dudley, and Swans’ Roli Mosimann, Infected was also accompanied by an ambitious album-length video…
Tracklist:
Media Report:
Genre: indie-pop, indie-rock
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits |
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