City Lights Shadow Ring, The SKU: BF038LP Barcode: 0783970982582 28.00 £28.00 Genre: Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo Label: Blank Forms Editions Released Date: 6th October 2023 Buying Format: 1LP Out of stock Back Order Add to your Wishlist Description Product Info 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 and self-released by the group’s own Dry Leaf Discs in 1993, City Lights 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). On 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. RIYL: The Fall, Royal Trux, The Dead C, Shirley Collins, ’70s British progressive rock, Dean Blunt Artist Shadow Ring, The Genre Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo Label Blank Forms Editions Buying Options 1LP Format 1LP Condition New Country UK Track Listings Double Standard City Lights Oooh Ahh Cape Of Seaweed Lyin' Eyes Cold Coffee Here Come The Candles Faithful Calls White Eyes The Visitor Snowbirds Of Alkatraz Share this On Facebook On Twitter Via Email More from Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo View Product Quick View Sonic Youth A Thousand Leaves Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo | UMC | 180g, 2LP Released 14th October 2016 £20.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Sonic Youth A Thousand Leaves £20.00 Genre: Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo Label: UMC SKU: 4743104 Formats: 180g, 2LP Released Date: 14th October 2016 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Matt's picks View Product Quick View Summer Cannibals Can’t Tell Me No Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo | Tiny Engines | 1LP, Includes Download Code Released 19th July 2019 £20.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Summer Cannibals Can’t Tell Me No £20.00 Genre: Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo Label: Tiny Engines SKU: LPTE201 Formats: 1LP, Includes Download Code Released Date: 19th July 2019 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Jello Biafra/Melvins Never Breathe What You Cant See Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo | Alternative Tentacles | 1LP Released 16th June 2017 £20.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Jello Biafra/Melvins Never Breathe What You Cant See £20.00 Genre: Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo Label: Alternative Tentacles SKU: VIRUS300LP Formats: 1LP Released Date: 16th June 2017 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Vacant Gardens Under the Bloom Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo | Tough Love | 1LP, Coloured Vinyl Released 20th May 2022 £21.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Vacant Gardens Under the Bloom £21.00 Genre: Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo Label: Tough Love SKU: TLV146LP Formats: 1LP, Coloured Vinyl Released Date: 20th May 2022 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Pillar of Na Saintseneca Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo | Epitaph | 1LP Released 31st August 2018 £17.00 Back Order View Pre/Back Orders Pillar of Na Saintseneca £17.00 Genre: Alternative Rock / Punk Rock / Emo Label: Epitaph SKU: 0045778761517 Formats: 1LP Released Date: 31st August 2018 Read More Back Order View Pre/Back Orders View Product Quick View Party Day Sorted! 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