Another stunning album cover image by the legend that is Storm Thorgerson founding member of design team Hipgnosis, reproduced as this beautiful limited edition signed fine art print.
After a long silence,the one time Fox and Yellow Dog returned with one of the most unusual albums ever made.
Because all the vocals were backed by sounds made by animals and released from Fairlights and other programming devices.
Kenny Young had made the first On Location sound recordings in 1985 and over 2 years they worked on the idea for a series of songs about Nature conservation to be given a backdrop of wildife and Nature rather than conventional instruments.
With something of an obsession re animal imagery...bands like Fox and Yellow Dog,publishing companies named Kangaroo and Lazy Lizard...Young took it a stage further.
Gentlemen Without Weapons were 3 musicians: in addition to Young there was Nick Glennie-Smith who was an in demand keyboardist who played on the Campbells album,and Vic Coppersmith-Heaven,producer and engineer for the Jam.
In this unique twist on the sampling theme what began as an idea soon became an all-consuming project with a lyrical focus which reflected on a growing concern for the future of the planet.And what was fantasy on "Last Stage For The Silverworld" now became songs about Acid Rain,endangered species,rain forests and the raising of planet consciousness.
Recording were made in Indonesia and Hawaii plus visits to British wildlife establishments armed only with a Digital Tape recorder
The songs are further informed by a number of commentaries by wildlife and ecology experts."Rain Of Terror" has a narrative by John Hurt
Then came the process of transplanting the assembled sounds onto the vocals of the songs,which relied on joint experiences in recording studios.So for the sound of an elephant cry it was sent into a Fairlight 3 before being sequenced into a coherent musical shape,recorded onto digital multi track,mixed on DAT,compiled on Audiofile and finally digitally cut.
Simple as that.There would be another 38 minutes to fill.

After all the wildlife sounds had been done a few more SFX were added such as chiming clocks,saucepans,squash balls and tribal singing.
The resulting LP came with a number of fact sheets full of statistics which were supposed to make you think:
"Plutonium dumped in the North Sea over the last 30 years would be enough to bring cancer and death to 250 million people (roughly half of the States)"
Or:
"In the U.K. alone farmers spent over 1000 million in 1982 on pesticdes.97% of our vegetables are sprayed with one or more of these chemicals"
The additional 12" leaflet contains about 20 minutes worth of reading for anyone who needs to know more,while the back of the sleeve shows closeups of a single eye of an animal or bird.
And with no sign of anything new from Kenny Young it might be worth pointing out that,as far as I know,the Kenny Young & the Eggplants on Amazon and are nothing to do with him

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