Name: The New Sound
Brand: Geordie Greep

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

RT0499LP

Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Housed in Gatefold Sleeve.

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2024-10-04

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

PIAS

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

0191402049916

Total Cap

9999

Black LPx2

RT0499LP2

Extended format: Yes

Alternative Artwork Housed in Gatefold Sleeve.

0191402049909

RT0499LP2RT0511SPE

With Alternative Artwork&nbsp;Housed in Gatefold Sleeve and Bonus 7" Featuring 'I Love my Family' / 'Aching Knees'.

RT0499LPRT0511SPE

Housed in Gatefold Sleeve With Bonus 7" Featuring 'I Love my Family' / 'Aching Knees'.

RT0499CD

0191402049923

Artist

Geordie Greep

Genre GB

Alternative / Modern

Label GB

Rough Trade

Rough Trade is a multinational label that was started by Geoff Travis in 1976 as a London record-shop. It quickly grew into an independent label and distributor, collaborating with notable labels such as 4AD, Factory Records, and One Little Indian. The label's catalogue numbering system for singles/EPs included prefixes like RT### and RTT###CD for different formats. Albums were numbered sequentially as ROUGH### with extensions for different formats.In the early 1990s, Rough Trade faced financial difficulties after expanding into the US market. The US branch was shut down and the German branch ended up in the Zomba Music Group. One Little Indian provided financing and took over the label in the UK, retaining ownership of key releases like A.R. Kane albums. Geoff Travis eventually regained control of Rough Trade around 1999–2000 and re-launched it alongside Tugboat Records.

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“The main theme of the record is desperation; you don’t hear an unreliable narrator but someone who is kidding themselves that they have everything under control, but they don’t.” Geordie Greep

Geordie Greep (guitarist and vocalist in black midi) releases his debut solo album The New Sound.

Following three astonishing albums with black midi, most recently 2023’s Hellfire, and almost non-stop worldwide tours for near-on five years, Geordie Greep has somehow found time to record his first solo album The New Sound, an album that has allowed him scope to explore creative ideas like never before. It boasts a brand of high quality, all-embracing alternative pop fun not heard in a very long time. Geordie Greep; “With recording The New Sound, it was the first time I have had no one to answer to. And with every impulse I had, I was able to completely follow it through to its conclusion. Being in a band (black midi), we often have this ‘we can do everything’ feeling, but you are also kind of limited in that approach, and sometimes it's good to do something else, to let go of things.”

Over thirty session musicians were involved in the making of the album, on two continents, in São Paulo and London. Geordie Greep; “Some of the tracks we had recorded already, elsewhere, but it just wasn’t right, so we re-recorded them with new people. Half of the tracks were done in Brazil, with local musicians pulled together at the last minute. They’d never heard anything I’d done before, they were just interested in the demos I’d made. The tracking was all done in one, maybe two days. Then we did the overdubs later, in London.”&nbsp;

Geordie Greep has had plenty of practice with black midi over the years in performing musical and lyrical Cruyff turns, full of stop-starts, blasts and bangs and whispered soliloquies. Here the method is employed to ask: what part of the narrative should we listeners believe, or take as our emotional crutch? The mercurial, insouciant tone set in ‘Terra’, or the gruesome imagery it is juxtaposed with? After all, Greep tells us, this is the story of “the museum of human suffering.” Consider, too, the strange emotional undulations created in ‘Through a War’, where the music makes a very polished stab at aping a soul revue; or a salsa class. It’s there to give colour to a set of imaginings which include cannibalism, being boiled alive, and a woman giving birth to a goat. You’re never quite sure when, or whether, you are supposed to be shocked; or laugh. Even if, as with the latter, Geordie Greep gives us the punchline; “And that’s how I spent my adolescence.”

Street life is all around: the listener is thrown into a world of cafes, bars and clubs, visit theatres, cabarets and strange museums, or rented rooms. Here we see our heroes carry out a series of naughty assignations, military cosplay or socio-economic triumphs. Greep; “I was often thinking of walking through a city, and thinking about a million dollars, showing that kind of feeling, you know?” Taking on The New Sound in its entirety can feel like you are trying to cross Piccadilly Circus after a skinful. Single ‘Holy Holy’ is possibly the best example: has urbane romantic fantasy ever sounded this way? Probably not since Noël Coward. This story of an imaginary liaison in a nightclub is soundtracked by ’noughties indie pop chords and bravura Latin big band arrangements - including a three-piano attack (Steinway, Bechstein, electric). ‘Motorbike’ sees a change in vocal duties: as bassist and album producer Seth ‘Shank’ Evans starts up a doleful soliloquy about not getting what he wants.&nbsp;

It’s certainly an album that fully engages the listener, throughout the eleven tracks. Greep; “I was worried about the length in terms of not overblowing it. But I’m also really bloody bored of listening to music and, for better or worse, knowing in advance what it means or what it’s trying to do. All my favourite music is about the listener coming to terms with what is going on. My favourite singers, like Peter Hammill or Nat King Cole, are literally one of a kind. I love that. Especially with lyrics, where you’re not sure what they’re going on about, but you know it’s not just abstract thoughts.”

What next? Could we see The New Sound as a live concept or is the album going to stay forever in our collective imagination? Greep; “My plan is to ‘do a Keith Jarrett thing’, have a different group of session musicians in a different place and lean into the fact that we’re not going to get it the same.” How can anything ever be ‘the same’ with Greep at the helm?

The New Sound

Music GB

Discover The New Sound by Geordie Greep on vinyl. A debut solo album exploring desperation with high-quality alternative pop. Released by Rough Trade.