Dear Friends
I have written a piece in the forthcoming edition of AEOS magazine celebrating the 40 year anniversary of “PsychoCandy”, The Jesus & Mary Chain’s debut album. The album that changed my life.
You can read the piece when it comes out in a few weeks time. I’m not going to go over what i say in there now, suffice to say my life might have been very different if it were not for that record.
In writing the piece i spent a long time thinking back to those days when i was a young kid in Glasgow, starting to make music and dreaming of becoming a degenerate rock ‘n’ roll animal. When the band’s follow up “Darklands” came out, i still wasn’t old enough to legally see them but aided and abetted by my older brother, Mark and our best friend Robin, we managed to ghost past security and into the hallowed Barrowlands ballroom. I’ll never forget that night.
“Darklands” was a deliberate move away from the feedback and noise of “PsychoCandy” which was an understandable thing for them to do at the time but in my opinion the ‘clean’ production sound didn’t reflect the raw beauty that reverberated within the songs.
And so, a week or so ago i decided after all this time that i should re-make the album as i imagined it to sound in my head. I was also very pleased to convince my friend Robin Purves who first introduced me to “Upside Down” the day it came out to read his poem “If The Moon Walked Off” over the end section of Nine Million Rainy Days. A fitting tribute i think to our shared love of the Jesus & Mary Chain.
And so this is it, “Darkerlands”. I hope you enjoy it.
You can download the album for FREE with the above link.
Enjoy
Love and Peace
Gil X
