Vinyl edition still available!
‘PART MONSTER’ TRACKLISTING :
- The Last Engineer
- England’s Always Better (As You’re Pulling Away)
- Incurable (Reprise)
- Soldier Song
- The King Cannot Be Found
- Great Escapes
- Cities & Factories
- Halfway Through
- Saints Preserve Us
- Part Monster
Bonus digital-only track :
11. Blank Page (Board Mix)
Originally released in 2007, ‘Part Monster,’ produced by Guy Fixsen of Laika, saw Piano Magic move on from the electro-pop tones of previous album, ‘Disaffected,’ towards a more dynamic set, more suited to the bigger festival stages they were playing around that time. Even so, statuesque, noisier tracks like ‘The Last Engineer,’ ‘Great Escapes,’ ‘Saints Preserve Us’ and ‘The King Cannot Be Found’ are finely balanced with the dark folk of ‘Soldier Song,’ ‘Cities & Factories’ and the Brexit-pre-empting, ‘England’s Always Better (As You’re Pulling Away).’
There’s a tougher, louder variant of perhaps their most famous track, ‘Incurable’ and guest appearances by Simon Rivers (The Bitter Springs) and trumpet maestro, Terry Edwards.
‘Part Monster’ was commercially released on 3 separate labels – Important (USA), Homesleep (Italy) and Green Ufos for the rest of the world. The last Piano Magic album to feature Cédric Pin, who relocated from London to France shortly afterwards, the band’s other core members at this time were Glen Johnson, Franck Alba, Alasdair Steer, Angèle David-Guillou and Jerome Tcherneyan.
Previously unreleased, digital-only bonus track ‘Blank Page (Board Mix)’ includes a sample from ‘Madeleine’ by The Durutti Column.
This is the final Piano Magic studio album to receive the vinyl treatment. Remastered for vinyl in 2023 by Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw.
Buy/download/stream ‘Part Monster’ on the official Piano Magic Bandcamp page
