News: Model Army - Carnival

New Model Army - Carnival
Release date: Friday, November 20th 2020

New Model Army's 2005 album 'Carnival' is reimagined and reborn and for the first time ever on vinyl & including 4 additional tracks. 25 years into New Model Army’s career and after its first release 'Carnival' will be available on November 20th via earMUSIC.

The album still begins with a birth (‘Water’ leads with the ultrasound of Michael’s first son) and ends with a death in ‘Fireworks Night’ – a heartfelt and emotionally tangled tribute to Robert Heaton,

who had left the band for health reasons in 1998 and died in November 2004, during the making of the record; but the running order has been altered to enhance the flow of the new dynamics and four newly added songs. ‘Rumour and Rapture 1650’ was originally written by Sullivan for the theatrical tour of “Freeborn John”, Rev Hammer’s English Civil War concept album, and tells the story of a disillusioned Parliamentarian soldier at the end of the war. ‘Caslen (Christmas)’ was originally a Nelson acoustic guitar instrumental but here has added words. ‘One Bullet’ and ‘Stoned, Fired and Full of Grace’ were previously known as live acoustic tracks but these are previously unreleased full-band versions.

Elsewhere the band cover their customary eclectic subject matter: the explosive ‘Red Earth’ inspired by their 2004 visit to South Africa, an early study of the refugee crisis in the hip-hop influenced ‘Another Imperial Day’ and the 2001 Bradford Riots told from the unusual point of view of an exhausted policeman (‘Carlisle Road’) and a wealth of musical invention from the orchestral strangeness of ‘Bluebeat’, fully realised at last, to the pounding rhythms of ‘Too Close to the Sun’, ‘BD3’ and ‘Island’.
And, in the spirit of this re-invention, the band’s regular artist, Joolz Denby, has reimagined the cover art of the 2005 album in a wholly original version.
“We are aware that it is very dangerous for a band to ‘go back’”, says Sullivan, “so we made one absolute rule, that we wouldn’t re-record anything and we’d ask Lee to remix it using only the original multi-tracks, without too much involvement from us. Some songs have changed very little, others quite a lot. And to our minds, this has worked well and has enhanced the album’s principle qualities, particularly the wealth of original musical ideas, at last arranged in a sonically satisfying way. We hope you enjoy it.”

New Model Army – one of the most influential bands in late 20th Century British rock music – have never been bound by musical genres. Formed in 1980, the band from Bradford were initially influenced by punk rock and northern soul, but over time drew from folk, metal, R&B, hip-hop and classical music to make something totally unique and unclassifiable.

For more information : brechtje.bergman@v2benelux.com