{"title":"The Shadow Ring","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"put-the-music-in-its-coffin-2","title":"Put The Music In Its Coffin","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor fans of The Fall, Royal Trux, The Dead C, Shirley Collins, ’70s British progressive rock, Dean Blunt.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThroughout their legendary, decade-long run, the Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7\"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning this year with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre-Shadow Ring tape The Cat and Bells Club (1992), Blank Forms Editions is conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group, including a multi-year LP reissue effort and a forthcoming comprehensive CD box set and an over five hundred page book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRecorded in summer of 1994 at S.H.P studios (frontman Graham Lambkin’s parents’ home), the group’s sophomore record \u003ci\u003ePut the Music In Its Coffin\u003c\/i\u003e is a more sinister, saturnine affair than their debut City Lights. Coffin was many listeners’ introduction to the Shadow Ring, who had hitherto self-released their music, courting a steady stable of international fans through the magazine and mail-order catalog Forced Exposure. For their follow-up, the duo reached out to the ascending Philadelphia label Siltbreeze, whose eclectic roster of sneering, low-fidelity rock and noise connected disparate subterranean scenes from rust-belt America to the English Midlands, Dunedin, and beyond. As luck would have it, Siltbreeze proprietor Tom Lax was already a fan of the band’s first record and arranged to release both a 7” and their “difficult second album.” The connection proved to run deeper than vinyl within six months, Lax would pick up the pair from the airport for their spring 1995 US tour. This episode marked not only their first trip to the States but their first live performances at all, formally introducing the Shadow Ring to the American underground and solidifying the allure of the Folkestone pair.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the get-go, the record has a menacing, vile ambience. Its opening track “Horse-Meat Cakes,” inspired by an anecdote by pulp author Philip K. Dick about how he and his wife subsisted off low-grade pet food when he first arrived in San Francisco, sets the tone lyrically and sonically. Subsequent tracks are filled with Rabelaisian body horror and sinewy, haptic diction. “I try to pass out vital organs, convinced that they are waste,” intones Lambkin in “Heart, Liver \u0026amp; Lungs,” before a chorus of detuned guitars kicks in, nearly drowning out the speaker’s account of consuming chevaline intestines. Later songs similarly detail vernacular cooking (“Caribbean Porridge,” about a cornmeal hangover cure), bodily processes (“Nocturnal Middle Rumbles,” about nighttime defecation), and creaturely conflict (“Crystal Tears” and “Spin The Animal Dial”). The album’s makeshift percussion and teenaged rawness resembles the verve of City Lights, while its screeching strings and gnarly distorted vocals give it a sparse, miasmic atmosphere that look towards the uncompromising, otherworldly experimentation of the band’s Hold Onto I.D. (1996) and Lighthouse (1997), making this one of the Shadow Ring’s most distilled musical statements.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blank Forms Editions","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50434664661323,"sku":"2050561","price":32.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Put_the_Music_In_Its_Coffin_d4dd9985_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726892784"},{"product_id":"city-lights-3","title":"City Lights","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor fans of The Fall, Royal Trux, The Dead C, Shirley Collins, ’70s British progressive rock, Dean Blunt\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThroughout their legendary, decade-long run, the Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7\"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning this year with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre-Shadow Ring tape The Cat and Bells Club (1992), Blank Forms Editions is conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group, including a multi-year LP reissue effort and a forthcoming comprehensive CD box set and an over five hundred page book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRecorded and self-released by the group’s own Dry Leaf Discs in 1993, \u003ci\u003eCity Lights\u003c\/i\u003e is the debut record of the then duo Graham Lambkin and Darren Harris an assured arrival statement teeming with stripling angst and ambition. Lifelong chums Lambkin and Harris were barely nineteen and living at home in the seaside town of Folkestone, Kent, with few overhead expenses. The two were freshly employed as a forklift operator at a hardware store and an aide at a home for children with disabilities, respectively, affording them the time and funds to commit to a proper full-length release. Frontman Lambkin describes the album as a “microscopic examination of leisure activities, this time centered around a nightclub,” a conceit surging through its lyrics, song titles, cover art (depicting an audience of cats and mice at the Leas Club, a Folkestone fixture), and flip side (replete with fictional bandmates and pseudonymous liner notes).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn a recently-acquired secondhand guitar, Lambkin plays repetitive, brooding licks that form the record’s backbone, weaving in and out of sync with Harris’s free-form percussion and the pair’s sing-song poetry. Tracks range from unraveling nursery-rhyme ditties to extended jams awash with Casiotone and toy piano noodling. The duo’s musical hobby-horses work themselves in: the influence of Mark E. Smith’s breathless deadpan, the headless outer-edges of ESP-Disk’s back catalog, the eerie atmospherics of Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa, and the deconstructed rock tunes of the Dunedin scene are all detectable, although there is a sui generis quality to the Shadow Ring’s artless temerity. “I’ve got to see and taste those city lights,” intones Lambkin on the album’s title track indeed, this is a record of naked drive and pent-up desperation, and a shimmering glimpse of what’s to come.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blank Forms Editions","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50485772091723,"sku":"2050560","price":32.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/City_Lights_2ac6ddd0_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727602884"},{"product_id":"hold-on-onto-i-d","title":"Hold On Onto I.D.","description":"\u003cp\u003eRecorded from late 1996 through early 1997, \u003cem\u003eHold Onto I.D.\u003c\/em\u003e, The Shadow Ring’s fourth album, marks the apogee of the trio’s experimental rock epoch—their last record clinging to their factitious bandness before they let all song and structure go awash in sonic malaise for their final run of releases on Swill Radio. The surrealist dreams of City Lights and Put the Music in Its Coffin give way to pseudo-expressionistic lyrics mired in the banality and bleakness of the everyday, set against the backdrop of the Coombe House (as pictured on the album’s cover). While \u003cem\u003eHold Onto I.D\u003c\/em\u003e.is the group’s most overtly autobiographical release to date, Lambkin’s lyrics obfuscate his expressionist tendencies filtering them through the codes and languages of officialdom, linking the “inner self” with documents of the state—identification cards, National Insurance numbers, and British passport numbers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHaving moved out of their parents’ homes and into the top floor of the famed Coombe House, Graham Lambkin and Darren Harris set out to rework material drafted over the previous year, aided by Tim Goss, still safely in residence at the “Valebrook Inn.” While the familiar sounds of Harris’s deadpan recitation and Lambkin’s electric guitar, amateurishly strummed, dominate the album, the emotive interludes of Goss’s keyboards populate the record along with of home-cooked tape experiments and dime-store concrète. Originally released on CD and supported by a US tour with friends Scott Foust and Karla Borecky’s Idea Fire Company, \u003cem\u003eHold Onto I.D.\u003c\/em\u003eis perhaps the band’s best-known and most accessible album. (The Shadow Ring’s sole representative on a streaming platform, it was once acknowledged by the Guardian as one of “the 101 strangest records on Spotify.”) Offered here for the first time on vinyl, H\u003cem\u003eold Onto I.D.\u003c\/em\u003eis an essential album for both completists and the uninitiated alike.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThroughout their legendary, decade-long run, the Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-under-ground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7”s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning in 2023 with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre–Shadow Ring tape \u003cem\u003eThe Cat and Bells Club\u003c\/em\u003e(1992), Blank Forms Editions has been conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group. \u003cem\u003eWax-Work Echoes\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eHold Onto I.D.\u003c\/em\u003e are the latest releases in a multiyear reissue effort that includes several LPs, a comprehensive CD box set, and a nearly five-hundred-pagebook.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blank Forms Editions","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":52485483004235,"sku":"R8430-7493","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/TheShadowRing-HoldOntoI.D.jpg?v=1750687668"},{"product_id":"wax-work-echoes","title":"Wax-Work Echoes","description":"\u003cp\u003eOriginally conceived as a compilation of outtakes and live recordings from The Shadow Ring’s 1995 stateside tour, \u003cem\u003eWax-Work Echoes\u003c\/em\u003e takes its name from the first line of “Put the Music in Its Coffin,” the title track of the group’s breakthrough release. Lambkin abandons the bits-and-bobs approach, advancing the Shadow Ring concept with entirely original material that builds on the unit’s self-mythologizing lyrics, celebrates the clicking of horse hooves, ponders on the sociability of rats and mice, and warns of the dangers of poultry. The first Shadow Ring album to officially include Tim Goss in the main lineup, \u003cem\u003eWax-Work Echoes\u003c\/em\u003e reveals the group in its final and lasting form, awash in the outer bounds of atmospheric exploration, with Lambkin’s familiar wry and morbid lyricism and the stripped-down angularity of amateurishly detuned guitars fully intact. While Klaus Canterbury and Tony Clark seem all but forgotten, and the shrugged off S. Fritz is listed on the liner notes as performing only “when required,” Lambkin did solicit contributions from outside the inner circle. A bit of “Mambo Twist,” lifted from a tape of unreleased Vitamin B12 material sent to Lambkin by Alasdair Willis, found its way into “V.E.R.M.I.N.,” while an extended epistle contribution from Richard Youngs (and, technically, Brian Lavelle) would be employed in the second half of “Catching Sight\/Of Passing Things.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReleased on CD in 1996 for Bruce Russell’s newly minted Corpus Hermeticum, \u003cem\u003eWax-Work Echoes\u003c\/em\u003e was recorded concurrently with intense rehearsal periods, in anticipation of the forthcoming “Rose Watson Tour,” and was supported by a celebratory fanzine media blitz. The album seemingly absorbs the frenetic excess of the band’s transatlantic travels; \u003cem\u003eWax-Work Echoes \u003c\/em\u003echannels the trio’s wilder instincts into an unresolved catharsis, not yet free of frustration or restlessness. Out of print for almost three decades and available here for the first time ever on long-playing disc, Wax-Work Echoes is a classic from the outer eddies of The Shadow Ring’s sound, a must-have for any aficionado’s collection: “A window slides, glass slips from frame \/ And canvas carcass breathes again.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThroughout their legendary, decade-long run, the Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Be-fore their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7”s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning in2023 with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre–Shadow Ring tape \u003cem\u003eThe Cat and Bells Club\u003c\/em\u003e (1992), Blank Forms Editions has been conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group. \u003cem\u003eWax-Work Echoes \u003c\/em\u003eand \u003cem\u003eHold Onto I.D. \u003c\/em\u003eare the latest releases in a multiyear reissue effort that includes several LPs, a comprehensive CD box set, and a nearly five-hundred-page book.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blank Forms Editions","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":52485606179147,"sku":"R8990-2050","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/TheShadowRing-Wax-WorkEchoes.jpg?v=1750688128"},{"product_id":"lighthouse-1","title":"Lighthouse","description":"\u003cp\u003eRecorded in 1997 after \u003cstrong\u003eThe Shadow Ring\u003c\/strong\u003e returned from their final US tour, \u003cem\u003eLighthouse\u003c\/em\u003e finds the group at their most stripped-back and far-reaching. \u003cstrong\u003eGraham Lambkin\u003c\/strong\u003e’s fractured texts drift through Folkestone’s haunted coastline, touching on Vikings, the Morgawr, a fading Britain and the pull of the sea.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou can hear the sway of \u003cstrong\u003eAlternative TV\u003c\/strong\u003e’s \u003cem\u003eVibing Up the Senile Man (Part One)\u003c\/em\u003e, the mechanical vernaculars of \u003cstrong\u003eRobert Ashley\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003eMark Perry\u003c\/strong\u003e, and the deflated humour of \u003cem\u003eDad’s Army\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eIt Ain’t Half Hot Mum\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginally released in 1999 on \u003cstrong\u003eScott Foust\u003c\/strong\u003e’s Swill Radio, this lost masterpiece returns on vinyl: a stark, lo-fi world of home recording and concrète capture. For fans of \u003cstrong\u003eAlan Titchmarsh\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eDavid Croft\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eHarry Pussy\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003eIdea Fire Company\u003c\/strong\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blank Forms Editions","offers":[{"title":"2LP - Black","offer_id":58023894647115,"sku":"R7534-5559","price":36.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/theshadowring-lighthouse.jpg?v=1785766343"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/the-shadow-ring.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}