The Palace Of Light - Beginning Here & Travelling Outward
Re.Ripped from a vinyl album released on Bam Caruso Records (KIRI 058) in 1987 to high resolution 24-bit lossless flac audio. With all this jangley feltness, it feels appropriate to re-rip the only album by The Palace Of Light. If you ignored this last time, then shame on you, if you missed it then you are in for a treat, if you grabbed it a few years back, then here is an upgrade.
Bam-Caruso Records were very active in releasing music by new bands alongside a plethora of psyche reissues, and gave a hand to Manchester University band, The Palace Of Light by lending them in-house producer, Brian Marshall and a string section for their only album.
The resulting Beginning Here and Travelling Outward is rather splendid. The Palace Of Light were responsible for some fine eighties semi-acoustic indie-pop but had little recognition except among their peers and a few local fans. The Smiths fronted by The Felt's Lawrence would be the best description of their sound but there are subtle twists of contemporary psyche (hence the Bam-Caruso interest). The gentle City Of Gold and the jangle-pop Safer were singles but neither gained any press recognition or praise. Folkier numbers such as Return To You and If She Should Blame Him were to feature on Bam-Caruso samplers, but for me, the Scott Walker-like Bitter Seal stand outs out as the album's highlight. The Palace were eventually to change their name to Mabel Joy and released just one more, very difficult to find compact disc album on Bam-Caruso in the early nineties. Enjoy.
A1 Safer
A2 City Of Gold
A3 Silver Thread
A4 Wind Brushed Soft
A5 Return To You
B1 See You Fall
B2 Watch Rome Burn
B3 If She Should Blame Him
B4 Hell Games
B5 Bitter Seal
B6 Unknowing
