Dark Star - Twenty Twenty Sound (Harvest, 1999)
My recent post about Hip-Pocket Records and my 4” Flexi-disc of ‘The Letter’ by The Box Tops got me thinking about other unusual records in my collection.
Dark Star released a 5” clear vinyl version of their tune ‘Graceadelica’ in 1999. Dark Star were formed by Christian Hayes, David Francolini and Laurence O’Keefe after their previous band Levitation had disbanded. Terry Bickers had formed Levitation with the lads after leaving The House of Love.
‘Graceadelica’ (Danny Saber single edit)/‘Dirt’ - 5” Vinyl (Harvest Records, 1999). Photograph by Paul McDermott.
‘Graceadelica’ was taken from Twenty Twenty Sound, the band’s 1999 debut album. ‘Graceadelica’ was originally released as a single in 1998 and re-released in December 1999 in multiple formats included my rather unusual 5” vinyl version. The multiple formats helped the single reach No. 25 in the UK Singles Chart on 15 January 2000. ‘I Am the Sun’ was the final single released from Twenty Twenty Sound reaching No. 31 in the Chart on 13 May 2000.
Twenty Twenty Sound was produced by Steve Lillywhite and its effects-laden guitars, manic drumming and heavily distorted vocals still sound great today, especially on the standout, ‘I Am the Sun’. The NME's review of the record got it spot on:
“A fine excursion into the murkier reaches of obsession crawling from the wreckage, then. It's not always pretty and seldom comprehensible, but you have to admire a band who can yell lyrics like I am centrifugal as if they were the meaning of life. Although what it all means is anyone's guess. And they said Bickers was the mad one.”
Tom Phillips designed Twenty Twenty Sound’s beautiful package. The artist and collagist had previously designed album covers for King Crimson (Starless and Bible Black, 1974) and Brian Eno (Another Green World, 1975). His design for Twenty Twenty Sound is similiar to the technique he utilised in his work A HUMUMENT, but using Dark Star’s lyrics as his source material.
A HUMUMENT is a treated book based on the Victorian novel A Human Document by W.H. Mallock.
(A Human Document. A Hum(an) (Doc)ument. A Humument.)
Inspired by William Burroughs’s “cut-up” writing technique, Tom Phillips bought an obscure Victorian novel for three pence - W. H. Mallock’s 1892 novel, ‘A Human Document’. Phillips drew, painted, and collaged over the pages of Mallock’s original text, leaving some of the original text to show through. A Humument was first published in 1970.
Describing his technique Phillips said:
“I plundered, mined, and undermined its text to make it yield the ghosts of other possible stories, scenes, poems, erotic incidents, and surrealist catastrophes which seemed to lurk within its wall of words. As I worked on it, I replaced the text I'd stripped away with visual images of all kinds. It began to tell and depict, among other memories, dreams, and reflections, the sad story of Bill Toge, one of love’s casualties.”
Revised editions appeared in 1986, 1998 and 2004. Each edition revises and replaces various pages. Phillips’s stated goal was to eventually replace every page from the 1970 edition. A few of the pages from the 1970 edition are reproduced above. The whole book can be seen here. Phillips passed away in 2022.
Out Flew Reason - Dark Star’s second album - was recorded at Rockfield, Wales and Westlake, Los Angeles in 2000-2001 and was eventually released in January 2023. It’s available on Bandcamp. Dark Star split up in 2001.
Twenty Twenty Sound is a firm favourite of mine, an album I return to again and again. It’s definitely worth tracking down. The band’s performance of ‘I Am the Sun’ on Later... with Jools Holland below is still breathtaking.