Put the Music In Its Coffin, by The Shadow Ring

Put the Music In Its Coffin

by The Shadow Ring

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$7 USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Record pressed at Memphis Record Press, metalwork by RTI, jacket by Dorado.

Includes unlimited streaming of Put the Music In Its Coffin via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 7 days

Purchasable with gift card

$25 USD or more

1.	Horse-Meat Cakes 06:12	buy track
2.	Heart, Liver & Lungs 04:03	buy track
3.	Put the Music In Its Coffin 03:12	buy track
4.	Remembering Old Friends 04:46	buy track
5.	Mustard Hooves 03:50	buy track
6.	Nocturnal Middle Rumbles 03:22	buy track
7.	Caribbean Porridge 05:20	buy track
8.	Crystal Tears 05:15	buy track
9.	Spin The Animal Dial 05:35	buy track
10.	Moonlight In Wings 04:25	buy track

about

Throughout 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 & 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.

Recorded in summer of 1994 at S.H.P studios (frontman Graham Lambkin’s parents’ home), the group’s sophomore record Put the Music In Its Coffin 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.

From 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 & 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.

credits

released October 6, 2023

2023 Blank Forms Editions reissue credits

Mastered by Stephan Mathieu
Audio restoration and remastering by Graham Lambkin with Daniel Martin-McCormick and Jade Guterman
Design by Alec Mapes-Frances

1994 Siltbreeze release credits

Recorded during the summer months of 1994. At S.H.P. Studios.
All material by Lambkin/Harris. Artwork by Graham Lambkin.
Our Thanks: Tom Lax & Mac Sutherland, Forced Exposure, Dave Cross w/ Joe & Tim, Alan Cummings, Bjorn Einan, & S. Jaworzyn.

license

about

Blank Forms Editions Brooklyn, New York

Blank Forms is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting emerging and underrepresented artists working in a range of time-based and interdisciplinary art practices, including experimental music, performance, dance, and sound art. Blank Forms provides artists with curatorial support, residencies, commissions, and publications to help document, disseminate, and advance their practices. ... more

blankforms.org

contact / help

Contact Blank Forms Editions

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Put the Music In Its Coffin, you may also like:

Lucy & Aaron
by Aaron Dilloway & Lucrecia Dalt

supported by 23 fans who also own “Put the Music In Its Coffin”

An excellent collaboration yielding melancholic and unsettling looping noise with ethereal vocals, tinged with a bit of 80s horror synth. Highly recommend! cedarshims
go to album
Shade
by Grouper

supported by 19 fans who also own “Put the Music In Its Coffin”

Reminds me of getting back home after a long road-trip. That feeling of relief. The peace of being in your own presence.
go to album
Children of the Forest
by Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, Hugh Glover

supported by 18 fans who also own “Put the Music In Its Coffin”

Professor Graves always amazes, this lost session from a week prior to the recording of his classic "Babi" is a welcome addition to his discography. Mr. Johnson
go to album
New Heaven
by Inter Arma

The metal’s band revelatory new record crosses genres and styles, effortlessly combining seemingly incompatible subgenres. Bandcamp Album of the Day Apr 26, 2024
go to album
Untouched By Fire
by Arð

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 26, 2024
go to album
Wretched Blessing
by Wretched Blessing

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 26, 2024
go to album
‘77 LIVE
by Les Rallizes Dénudés

supported by 17 fans who also own “Put the Music In Its Coffin”

обожаю night of the assassin andron_veshurov
go to album