LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

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mc
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LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by mc »

Slightly long story: I got Suede's "Coming Up" out the library yesterday, and was surprised by how well it held up 20 years on (I sold all my Suede CDs in my first year of uni to buy more booze :lol: ) Anyhow, it was produced by Ed Buller in his usual shiny synthy trebly style, and Wikipedia claims Buller also did production and engineering work on Lazer Guided Melodies (without citation). I read the same thing in a 1996 Pulp biography, where Jarvis Cocker said the band chose Ed Buller as their new producer after hearing his work on Lazer Guided Melodies.

So, the point of that rambling tale: does anybody more knowledgable than me know if Ed Buller actually worked on LGM or not? He gets production credits on the Feel So Sad and Run/I Want You singles (and more?), but not on the album. Did Pulp mistake the early Spz singles for LGM, or was Ed Buller left off the LGM credits? Apologies for the very geeky question, but this one has been bugging me on and off for nearly two decades...
Multi
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by Multi »

Coming Up sounds so "tingy," "metallic," and blown out from an overabundance of cocaine use that I find it unlistenable.

Dog Man Star, however, still sounds fantastic.
mc
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by mc »

Multi wrote:Coming Up sounds so "tingy," "metallic," and blown out from an overabundance of cocaine use that I find it unlistenable.

Dog Man Star, however, still sounds fantastic.
I know exactly the sound you mean, and I'm not generally a fan of it at all. But then, as far as I'm concerned Pulp's 1992-1994 output is virtually unsurpassed in terms of popular music, and Ed Buller's sound is a colossal part of that. I think the shiny, echoey, metallic sound he creates really suited Pulp's music at that time, which was essentially masses of ancient, wheezing synths with trebly guitar on top. I'm not sure it suited anything else, but for birthing that masterful run of singles and EPs (O.U., Babies, Razzmatazz, Lipgloss, His 'n' Hers, Do You Remember The First Time? and The Sisters E.P.) I'll forgive him anything :)

Does anyone here love Pulp, out of interest? I can't be alone, can I? :lol:
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by TheWarmth »

I'm a big fan of Pulp's three big albums: His N Hers, Different Class and This Is Hardcore. Totally unfuckwithable.
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by heisenberg »

I really like Pulp too. I saw them play in 1998. They were excellent. I've even went back and had a listen to all their early stuff, too. While a lot of it is pretty bad, there are some gems in there (my lighthouse, death goes to the disco, don't you want me anymore? being good examples). I always felt bad for the way This is Hardcore was treated. If I recall, it flopped massively when it came out. The title track is amazing. I really liked Jarvis' first solo album.

I think it's a pretty cool piece of trivia that Pulp wanted to work with ed buller because of lgm. I remember reading a pulp book in the 90s where the band named lgm as one of their favourites. Cool to think of the effect that lgm had on other bands back then, especially those using keys.

I actually really loved coming up when it came out (I was maybe about 14 when I got it). The mixing is very weird. If I was playing bass in that band id be pretty angry as the bass is completely non-existent. Great songs, though.
mc
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by mc »

I adore Pulp's early material, and listen to it a lot more nowadays than their well known albums. There's something so awkwardly charming about their pre-fame incarnation I can't resist, and some of it is quite extreme; Freaks is certainly one of the bleakest albums I've ever encountered. The music itself is often ramshackle, badly played and produced, but the songs themselves are often brilliant and never less than interesting. They were also often ferocious live at the time, as the mid-80s bootlegs available can attest, mainly thanks to Magnus Doyle (Candida's brother) on drums, who was an often unhinged virtuoso.

There's a few links between Pulp and the Spacemen universe. Both bands were both on Fire together for a while, and Mark Webber apparently used to "follow Spacemen 3 around" before becoming Pulp's tour and fanclub manager, live guitarist and eventually sixth member. It was Mark who compiled and released the "Oozing Through The Ozone Layer" cassette featuring Pulp and Spacemen 3 among others, together with Natty Brooker's titular artwork on the sleeve. Lastly for now, here's Steve Mackey (Pulp's bass player) on the recording of "Common People":

"Me and Jarvis sat in my basement and played [the early mixes] about five times, thinking that it was really good, that it definitely didn't sound like a record anybody had made before. Six months before, we'd been listening to a lot of minimalist music like Steve Reich, La Monte Young and Glenn Branca, which Mark started us off on, having gotten into them through Jason of Spacemen 3. These composers were all conceptualists, so we had this concept of there only being three chords in the whole song, to start off quiet and end up with this huge wall of sound, as if it went up a mountain, and be louder than anything we'd ever heard".

So there you go: Spaceman inadvertently helped bring "Common People" to the world :D
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heisenberg
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by heisenberg »

That is such a cool story. Imagine spending the 80's travelling with Spacemen 3, getting music recommendations from Jason, then going on to join a band just as they hit their commercial and creative peak, as well as headlining Glastonbury. That's a pretty charmed adventure, I'd say.
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by clewsr »

been enjoying this thread. I was quite a fan of pulp for a time and live they did have quite an intensity.

By chance I saw this old interview with Jarvis pop up on the Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/f ... mper-on-me
mc
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by mc »

Thanks for the link, clewsr! Always good to read old interviews.

Just in case anyone is interested, I've put together two compilations of my favourite early (pre-1994) Pulp material for folks to download. The first covers their 1981-1986 period, and the second covers 1987-1993; all songs should be in rough chronological order, and I've included a good few rarities and B-sides in lieu of some of the tracks already featured on various cash-in compliations. Here's the track listings:

Pulp 1981-1986

1. Please Don't Worry (1981 Peel Session)
2. Wishful Thinking (1981 Peel Session)
3. Turkey Mambo Momma (1981 Peel Session)
4. Refuse To Be Blind (1981 Peel Session)
5. Sickly Grin (1982 Spice Demo)
6. My Lighthouse
7. Joking Aside
8. Looking For Life
9. Everybody's Problem
10. ...There Was
11. I Want You (1984 Bad Maureen Demo)
12. Coy Mistress (1984 Bad Maureen Demo)
12. Maureen (1984 Sudan Gerri Demo)
13. Little Girl (With Blue Eyes)
14. Simultaneous
15. Dogs Are Everywhere
16. 97 Lovers
17. Aborigine
18. I Want You
19. Being Followed Home
20. Master Of The Universe
21. There's No Emotion
22. Don't You Know
23. They Suffocate At Night

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c50vavyqezsr ... x01Qa?dl=0

Pulp 1987-1994

1. Death Comes To Town (1987 FON Demo)
2. Love Is Blind
3. She's Dead
4. Separations
5. My Legendary Girlfriend
6. Death II
7. Countdown (12" Version)
8. Death Goes To The Disco
9. Space
10. O.U. (Gone, Gone)
11. Styloroc (Nites Of Suburbia)
12. Sheffield: Sex City
13. Live On (1992 BBC Session)
14. Deep Fried In Kelvin
15. Street Lites
16. The Babysitter
17. His 'n' Hers

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/huvoxv5vn080 ... J_Kua?dl=0

If the downloads don't work let me know, and enjoy the quirky, bleak, frustrated, ramshackle world of 1980s Pulp :D

(PS. apologies for the large proportion of 128 kbps mp3s; those songs are from some of the first CDs I ever ripped, and I've never gotten round to re-ripping at a better bitrate :lol: )
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by heisenberg »

Cheers for this! I ended up listening to a bit of Pulp this week thanks to this thread.
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by James T »

Saw Pulp 4 times on their reunion tour, and that was totally incredible! They played a few early tracks throughout, with My Lighthouse, OU, Sheffield Sex City, Countdown and others making appearances. I think even Dogs Are Everywhere might've shown up at one...

The "big 3" are all amazing, and I'm a big an of We Love Life too. Wicker man, what a track!
mc
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by mc »

Oh, Wickerman - their last, and one of their greatest masterpieces. I must confess to enjoying TIH a lot less than I did when it was released; a few of the tracks (Dishes, TV Movie, I'm A Man, Sylvia) sound a bit too "generic indie" for my liking, and I really wish they'd kept Cocaine Decisions as it was instead of rewriting it into Glory Days. I understand what Russell Senior meant when he said that one of the reasons he left post- Different Class was that Jarvis let fame go to his head and took over the songwriting for the band. Beforehand the music (if not the lyrics) was always made in a very collaborative fashion, and post-DC it was almost like Pulp became Cocker's backing band (to paraphrase Senior).

That said, "This Is Hardcore" the song is another stone-cold masterpiece. To think that such a nihilistic, bleak, brilliantly unpleasant song got on Top Of The Pops and narrowly missed out on the UK Top 10! Forget today's hypersexual porn-normalised society; eighteen years later (God, ageing is a scary thing!) it still sounds utterly filthy...



I never did see Pulp on the reunion tour (or at all, sadly - I lived in the middle of nowhere as a kid :( ) but the youtube clips of them playing the old stuff were great - especially when Jarvis got his sister Saskia and her friend Jill onstage to sing backing vocals on My Lighthouse almost 30 years after originally recording their parts :)

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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by James T »

That is one of the shows I made! It was the day before my birthday I think. Something like that. It was a great night. They played the Birds in your Garden, which might've been the only time other than the WLL tour.
mc
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by mc »

Oh, fantastic James! I bet that was a helluva night. I really wish I'd made the effort to travel to one of the reunion gigs now. I very much doubt they'll play together again. If anything, Candida's dreadful rheumatoid arthritis will surely make performing live harder and harder for her as the years pass, and frankly I don't think Pulp could legitimately exist without her. It was bad hard enough when Russell Senior left! Incidentally, his new autobiography is worth seeking out if you haven't already; too much road trip travelogue about the few 2011 reunion gigs he attended and far too little 80s insight for my liking, but a decent read nevertheless.

Just one more youtube for the night: Countdown recorded live in 1991. Russell having lots of fun on his wah-wah here, and some endearing lack of timing on Nick Banks' part. Pity the cameraperson forgot Candida was on stage too :?

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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by toomilk »

Back to Ed Buller, I'm only seeing him on Feel So Sad and the Run/IWY singles. Interesting to note that he's credited with "Mixed and Flanged" on Slowdive's Souvlaki. However, he also produced a Stabbing Westward album. *shudders* :|

I can't find anything on him with LGM (aside from Run and IWY appearing on LGM). Barry Clempson is credited with producing it. It looks like he also did production on the Verve EP and a few other early singles.

Here are a few references for Ed Buller/LGM:

Filter says, "The former Psychedelic Furs keyboardist-turned-producer not only sat behind the boards for Suede, Dog Man Star and Coming Up, he has also helmed Pulp’s His ’N’ Hers, Spiritualized’s Lazer Guided Melodies and White Lies’ debut, To Lose My Life.
"

Described on a Blog of Pulp Songs: https://pulpsongs.wordpress.com/2013/08 ... gone-gone/ : "Ed Buller, a formerly jobbing keyboard player who was suddenly getting a lot of high-profile work, had recently finished working on Spiritualized’s ‘Lazer Guided Melodies’ – an album described by Simon Reynolds as “quiver[ing] with Apollonian attributes – airiness, fleetness, radiance, serenity… all about the exhilaration of cutting loose, of goalless propulsion…” – as apt a description as any of what O.U. (and Space and Babies) ended up as. O.U. didn’t need any great re-working or extra recording, but Buller still managed to tweak it enough that anyone can hear the group shift into the light, shimmering mode that would prove to be his (and their) trademark over the next three years."
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by toomilk »

PS: I saw Pulp in between their Coachella weekends in 2012 and they were incredible. I think they played for 3 hours or something incredible like that. Very loose, organic. They seemed to really be enjoying themselves and Jarvis is one hell of a frontman.
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by Multi »

James T wrote:The "big 3" are all amazing, and I'm a big an of We Love Life too. Wicker man, what a track!
Absolutely. I love We Love Life and think that the whole band going out together on Sunrise is tops. Both Different Class and This is Hardcore are arguably career peaks.

I just to want to say that I love early Suede since my original Coming Up comment is harsh--it's just the production on that one that I'm not a fan of. Great b-sides though.
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by mc »

Having relived Coming Up for a week now, I can certainly agree that the production is mostly awful - where's the bass, fer feck's sake? - apart from the synths, which sound utterly gorgeous. They really must've been his forte, being a keyboard player as well.

Song-wise, I recalled 'Filmstar's lyrics as being laughably banal, and my memory was right save for the "what to believe in when they change your name" line, which now strikes me as deceptively simple and rather clever. 'Lazy' actively annoys me - I almost throw up in my mouth every time I hear that heavily detuned guitar/bass note - and 'Starcrazy' is just meh. On the other hand, 'Trash' and 'Beautiful Ones' are every bit as addictive as my teenage self remembers, 'Picnic By The Motorway' and 'Saturday Night' still sound beautifully melancholic, and 'The Chemistry Between Us' remains a lovely piece of melodrama. My only real surprise was 'By The Sea': somehow I'd completely forgotten about this song, but it really is a gorgeous piece of work and probably the best track on the album. So overall, a good reintroduction to Suede after nigh-on 20 years, and I reckon I might just give the first album or Dog Man Star another go.

One last observation: as a callow 15 year old I had little to no knowledge or experience of David Bowie. It's now it's transparently obvious where Brett Anderson got his schtick from :)
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by Laz69 »

Just realised at the weekend that Ed also produced and engineered The Boo Radley's Everythings Alright Forever... which sounds just gorgeous to my ears.
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by Aquarian-Time »

I went to see Suede last week in Manchester. Truly stunning and fair play to Brett, he performs like its his last ever performance. Such intensity. New album is outstanding and right up there with their best work. I like Coming Up as an album, production is very shiny though but I imagine that was the whole idea, to go with the melodrama and glam feel they were going for. But yeah Brett owes a hell of a lot to Bowie of that there is no dispute.
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by heisenberg »

Yeah, I always thought Coming Up was intentionally produced in that shiny way for radio play.

Has anyone heard the new Suede album?
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by Aquarian-Time »

Yep. Its very good, I would rate it up there with Dog Man Star for sure. It suits the accompanying film they play to perfectly. The band play behind the film screen, visible but only just and clever use of lighting make it look quite effective.
The album is not played in order but in the order suited to the film. The film is very dark and and at times a little unsettling, but really well done. I not sure any other band would pull it off quite as they have done both visually and msuically.
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by spunder »

Laz69 wrote:Just realised at the weekend that Ed also produced and engineered The Boo Radley's Everythings Alright Forever... which sounds just gorgeous to my ears.
yeah! nothing sounds like that album, such a unique psychedelic haze , heavy intense yet also airy and spacious.
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by clewsr »

agreed. love that first boo radleys album
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by TheWarmth »

Aquarian-Time wrote:Yep. Its very good, I would rate it up there with Dog Man Star for sure. It suits the accompanying film they play to perfectly. The band play behind the film screen, visible but only just and clever use of lighting make it look quite effective.
The album is not played in order but in the order suited to the film. The film is very dark and and at times a little unsettling, but really well done. I not sure any other band would pull it off quite as they have done both visually and msuically.
Yeah, the new Suede is great. Easily up there with the first three albums. Recommended.
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by sunray »

clewsr wrote:agreed. love that first boo radleys album
Apologies, but my pedantic streak wouldn't let this pass. It's actually their second album. First one was 'Ichabod and I' :wink:
Nineteen...Nineteen...Six Five
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by Ian »

Hi all. Haven't been around for ages. My website is still fucked. Sorry about that.

Anyway, I interviewed Ed Buller when I was putting out the Boo Radleys fanzine Adrenalin, and a small part of that was about Spiritualized. It wasn't very in depth, but I illustrated it with the cover of Run/I Want You - I'm sure I'd have used the LGM cover and talked a bit more about them if he'd done the album. So I'm pretty sure it was just the two singles.

I did the interview at Master Rock studios, where Ed was recording Dog Man Star with Suede. During the day, we saw Matt and Simon wandering around, looking tense. Ed said some interesting stuff about Bernard, but made it sound as if everything was OK. A few days after the interview, Bernard left the band...

I think Suede are excellent, by the way, but I can't summon up the enthusiasm to check out their recent albums. Are they any good?

I hope that I may pop in here a bit more from now on, but I've finally discovered The Fall, and keeping up with them feels like a full time job!
I have a passion sweet Lord...
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Re: LGM technical question - Ed Buller?

Post by Laz69 »

Hi Ian... good to see you're still around these parts.

Don't want to take over the thread but you woldn't have any of those old Boo Radleys fanzines kicking about would you? Were there many? Would love to read them sometime. Hit me a PM.
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