Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
€6EUR or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Good old transparent jewelcase - 4p booklet - 61 min of music.
For each order, you will receive a bonus CD-R of exclusive material : previews, stems and drafts from the recording sessions of our next album (releases in 2025).
Each of these numbered CD-R will document the band at a specific stage of rehearsal and recording and therefore will be unique !
Includes unlimited streaming of Prepare Thyself to Deal with Treacle
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Government's sixth LP «PREPARE THYSELF TO DEAL WITH TREACLE». Total running time : 61'08"
All selections conceived, composed, recorded, scattered and collected by Emma NEWELL & Thor VIK at Emma's loft in West Brompton. Additional help and arrangements by Sue CYDE. « Prepare Thyself » was composed from December 20th, 2020 to February 24th, 2022.
This may seem surprising when listening to the final result, but this album was conceived as a tribute to the music of the 1950s, in particular rhythm'n'blues, rockabilly and doo-wop, but also cartoon music and Duke Ellington orchestral jazz. Emma's reading of « Unsung Heroes of Rock'n'Roll » by Nick Tosches (to whom the album is dedicated) and then her discovery of a second-hand Farfisa in a flea market were also decisive in the first weeks of the composition. The bases of the six tracks were laid down in the winter of 2020 and then reworked, edited. A particular care was taken, during several months still, to think about the sequences, which had been also the longest stage during the making of« Shitshitshit »'s 43 tracks.
For Emma and Thor, this record is also their most faithful attempt at making a "surreal rock" album. Their mutual passion for surrealism, in particular the Belgian surrealist movement (Nougé, Scutenaire, Magritte, Mariën,...) which presided over the meeting of Emma and Thor and saw them live almost ten years in Belgium, finds a particular inclination in « Prepare Thyself.... ». « Shitshitshit... » and the previous albums were already conceived in the manner of collages where « the contributions of each were countered by others, these contributions being only warping of commonplaces »* that considered in the same way the popular refrains and the most modern forms of art, always looking at them from an ironic and sarcastic angle. But the dreamlike, even nightmarish atmosphere is more prevalent here in the longer tracks where the internal logic of the association of heterogeneous objects in unexpected sequences unfolds. The meeting with the common places, the hackneyed riffs and the writing proper to the rock music and henceforth familiar of all the listeners had to be done under the auspice, dear to the group of Brussels of « the will of depersonalization, the practice of the anonymity, the refusal of any complacency to the aesthetics »*. For their first album recorded far from Belgium, Emma & Thør pay a very special tribute to the country of Magritte and Nougé - it could be their most revealing album of their approach.
* Quotes are taken from A. Souris, « Paul Nougé et ses complices » in F. Alquié (éd.), Entretiens sur le surréalisme, Paris - La Haye, Mouton, 1968.
credits
released April 19, 2022
Government in this recording were :
- Thør VIK : electric guitar, bass guitar, ride cymbal, crash cymbal, some quaint keyboards on 1, 3 & 5, harmonica on 3, distorsion, fuzz and jew's harp everywhere, remo framedrum on 4, woodblocks on 6, handclaps.
- Emma NEWELL : farfisa, electric organ, piano, mellotron, Hammond B3, Polysix, Yamaha CS-80, Yamaha DX-7, Casiotone MT 65, Roland Juno-6, Korg PS-3100, PAiA Proteus 1, Roland CR-78 programming, other keyboards & drum programming on all tracks, tapes, doo-wop and rockabilly samples, digital glitches, handclaps.
with additional help and sonic assistance from :
- Sue CYDE : bass clarinet, oboe, flute, bassoon, saxophone, trumpet, english horn, cello, bells, glockenspiel on 2, 3 & 6, tabla, congas, remo framedrum on 4, woodblocks on 6, handclaps.
- Victor BOINEM : samples on 2, 3, 4, 5, vibraphone on 6, editing and mix.
-Hadrien PANELLI : drums on 2, 5, gong on 6, church bells, sleigh bells and metal percussion on 2.
This album contains quotes from the following artists (by order of appearance) : Henry ROLLINS, Johnny BURNETTE, The CAMELOTS, The TOKENS, The EDSELS, Anthoine BOESSET, Kristian Craig ROBINSON, FIREWATER, Isobel CAMPBELL & Mark LANEGAN, Lydia LUNCH, Clint RUIN, Karlheinz STOCKHAUSEN, SWEET JANE, Adrian BOULDT, THE BLACK HEART PROCESSION, POPOL VUH, RED TEMPLE SPIRITS, Mark ROBSON & Val LEWTON, TANGERINE DREAM, Tommy WISEAU, David LYNCH, The TALKING HEADS, Tom VERLAINE, TECHNO ANIMAL, SWANS, The CINEMATIC ORCHESTRA, Alain BASHUNG, Diamanda GALAS, Tim BLAKE, Craig NICHOLLS, Glen VELEZ, Louis JORDAN, AIR, Robert WOOD, The WIRE, MORPHINE, ADD N TO (X), UNIVERS ZERO, Mulatu ASTATKE, The GREENHORNES, Duke ELLINGTON, TELEVISION, ROYAL TRUX, David AXELROD, Terry KATH, Orchester Les HUMPHRIES and many others forgotten in the process. Quotes are not necessarely or simply samples, they are hints of a few seconds or very temporary evocations that mostly occur in couples or trios.
Edited and mixed by Emma NEWELL and BLEEDS at Quai Churchill, Liège and Emma's loft in West Brompton.
Album mastered by BLEEDS at Quai Churchill, Liège in march 2022. However, some tracks and tapes were lost between London and Belgium, and another computer crashed this time, as when we were finishing « Shitshitshit (Japanese Death Poem) » - therefore what you will hear may differ from what we had in mind, which might be good news for you.
Artwork and layout by BLEEDS.
This record is dedicated to Nick TOSCHES.
Pop Katari is a web-label founded in Liège in 2008 to promote our music. Pop, rock, jazz, techno, improvised pieces, black
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supported by 4 fans who also own “Prepare Thyself to Deal with Treacle”
Set aside an hour and let this composition wash over and through you. It might seem at first listen that not much happens but by the third go-round it transports you into a trance state of sang froid that once experienced is life-changing. It is that powerful. Mark Burgess
