Empires and Dance
Empires and Dance is the third studio album by the Scottish rock band Simple Minds.
History
Despite the lack of commercial success of its predecessor Real to Real Cacophony, the band members to the chosen course of experimental music at the interface between rock and pop remained faithful. Empires and Dance, was added in the summer of 1980, again under the production of John Leckie, sounds without sacrificing sophisticated to the experimental units. Leckie designed the effect use more cautious and gave inclusion to a smoother sound. Meanwhile, the Simple Minds had also developed through frequent appearances a very good reputation as a live band.
The album laid the foundation for the next two albums, which should continue on the path with Empires of Dance. The artistic collaboration in which Kerr wrote the lyrics and the whole band contributed music to the songs had been strengthened and remained unchanged on the following albums. Also the sound of the album was the trend for the following years.
Publication
Initially planned as a third release of Zoom Records in the UK, the band split before the release of the label and Virgin Records turned to him. The album was instead released directly from Arista, the distributor of Zoom Records in 1982 and re-released unchanged from Virgin. A CD version was released in 1985 on Virgin, which also brought a digitally remastered version on the market in 2002. 2012, the album was in the X5 box set of Virgin Records with 3 bonus tracks released again.
Title list
Bonus Tracks
Occupation
- Jim Kerr ( vocals)
- Charlie Burchill (guitar, violin, background vocals)
- Derek Forbes (bass, background vocals )
- Brian McGee (drums, percussion, background vocals)
- Michael MacNeil (keyboards, background vocals )
Chart success
Empires and Dance placed in September 1980 in the British album charts to position 41
Reception
Christian Graf, according to the NME described the album because of the political content as "a violently agitatorisches album". Graf rated music production " between disco and experimental New Wave ".
Dave Thompson compares the attempts by the band to bridge the gap between rock and pop, in his review of the Odyssey: " caught in the eddies in between the Scylla of proto -industrial dance and the Charybdis of the lush gloom of post-punk proto- Goth. " ( " caught between the Scylla of pre-industrial dance music and the Charybdis of strong Schwermuts of post-punk early Gothic " )