She's Dead and Down by the River are ok. Everything other track is bloody amazing!

Countdown is probably my favourite song of all time (at the moment :)) and Don't You Want Me Anymore is superb.

I must seek out some live versions of said songs!

I'm a Separations freak. I've gone beltless ever since I saw the "Girlfriend" video. But I love all things Pulp, and I'm a freak in general. See my space for a very Separations-influenced song ("Miserable In Love"). My production's not even as good as theirs was back then, though, I'm afraid.

His 'n' Hers without "She's a Lady" and "Happy Endings"? I should have known from your songs. You're out of your bloomin' mind, Jock.

Mike wrote:

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Seperations is the first classic Pulp album in my book. Sounds great on a rainy day.

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separations is great, but how can you just dismiss freaks? (power, claustrophobia, suffocation and holding hands...). it might have something to do with being an '86 kid and not liking the smiths that much, but i absolutely love this album.

and i reckon 'she's a lady' has to be one of the best post-disco-though-not-techno dance tracks around. alongside 'countdown', of course.

but, if it wasn't on the album, could it ever be a b-side?

"Separations" - is when Jarv almost ready for the creation of the song "Babies". Hmm, very decent album. And if his play in the acoustics will be even better. I especially like the song "Death II" and bubbles on the cover.

Maybe it was trying to tell you something - were you living in a hovel at uni?

Separations is Pulps first properly good album. Crap cover art though.

Jarvis baritone is also on show as well. Love the album. its like their Casio version of Warp in a way....even the sleeve.

Very true about the Warp statement. I absolutely love This House Is Condemned. They took the key elements of Acid House and reworked them into something distinct, peculiar and stylish. It still stands up today. It's my favourite album alongside HnH and the sleeve for Countdown is one of the best in my opinion. Listen to it with headphones- there's so much going on. I don't think the production is shabby at all. It's restrained but suitably quantized and subtly epic before the cavernous blast of HnH really got things going. All hail Separations.

Love the lyrics of Love is Blind!

Hi there, I've been lurking for a while but felt I finally had to join and post. I too love Separations and I think that the gig at The Limit (3-3-87) is one of the best to listen to if you wanna get a feel of that crazy casio, eastern europe disco folk vibe they were rockin' in the late 80's.

Yeah it is Matt. I sent it to the yahoo account a few weeks ago.

I too love Separations. I think for me it's cos it was the first Pulp album that I bought. Bought it on CD for about £14 in March 1996 in a HMV in one of the shopping centres probably the Square. My brother had bought Different Class just a few months prior to that. So Separations was only the 2nd Pulp record in our house followed by the Countdown compilation a little bit later. I think cos music was so expensive and you wouldn't get much of it you would tend to cherish the CDs you did get. I was very intrigued by the artwork and the picture inside as they all looked quite different to how they looked now. I think my initial reaction on listening was being totally baffled. It didn't sound like the whole Britpop stuff that was raging around at the time. I distinctly remember me and my friends dancing around the room to it with snooker cues and tennis rackets and hairbrushes - you know playing 'the band game' :) Ah nostalgia. Music wasn't so accessible so you were happy with what you got! So I did love it but in time it has remained a favourite and like others have mentioned I'd have liked some more work in that vein and along the lines of Live On and The Boss (which I downloaded a recording which one of you uploaded there from 1992). Jarv doesn't seem too keen on the genre in the His N Hers deluxe notes but I love that stuff. Plenty of keyboards :) Death II and Countdown would probably be my faves but it's hard to choose faves. I remember I wanted to learn the lyrics to Death II and having to hand write them out and stop and start the CD... I *love* the extended version of 'Countdown' very much. Yeah that stuff is a favourite for me but like I said it might be just that Separations has very particular personal connotations and memories for me given it was my first time (to buy a Pulp album)

That's brilliant. Many thanks for doing that. I'll be uploading some bits and pieces asap.

Sleeve wrote:

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calumlynn wrote:

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Hmm, do they use drum machines or midi on She's A Lady? The, err, dunno what to call it, like an arpeggiator which only plays one note, basically the synth that goes duh duh duh duh throughout the whole song is a stylophone. And I cant hear any drum machines on the track.

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 That is a stylophone but there is a drum machine to keep in with the sequenced elements (there are some) of the track. It's not electronic in style though- just resembles a heavily gated and quantised drum kit, but it's definitely a dm!

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Eee very interesting, thanks for that info. Also, listening through my 12 versions of She's A Lady- they used to play it quite a few different keys, didn't they?!

I think the version done at ULU in 1992 and the 92 Goodier session version are good examples of the Stylophone/violin intro that this song had. The Cigalle version from 91 is rather wonky and doesnt seem to have the violin intro and completely different lyrics. It's funny beacuse to me the studio version doesn't sound like stylophone at all.

calumlynn wrote:

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Hmm, do they use drum machines or midi on She's A Lady? The, err, dunno what to call it, like an arpeggiator which only plays one note, basically the synth that goes duh duh duh duh throughout the whole song is a stylophone. And I cant hear any drum machines on the track.

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Just a belated response to this - I listened to She's a Lady the other day and to my ears, it seems like the riff at the start is indeed the stylophone, but there's something or other doubling it up an octave or two lower down - maybe a synth, or maybe they'd put the original part through a harmoniser or something. Does that sound plausible to anyone else?

Man does the album version miss that violin though.

Maybe we can find Ed Buller to give us details on His 'n' Hers' production, just like Alan Smyth did for Separations on PulpWiki.

I'd actually be interested in knowing who exactly played what on the other Island albums too. It's very hard with keyboards (Jarvis, Mark, Candida) and guitars (Jarvis, Mark, and/or Russell) .

saw119 wrote:

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It's hard to tell isn't it. One thing we can say is both Mark and Candida play keyboards on the song from what I can see and Candida is playing both of hers so the possibilities of having at least two sampled stylophones is more than feasible. It could be a double tracked sampled stylophone easily just to suit the song. It's a brilliant performance though, Pulp were a mighty live band in this period.

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Oh, I was talking about the studio version by the way - just posted the video because I like it! I think the live version just has the one stylophone (or no stylophone for most of that video - sounds like the soundman forgot to turn it up till partway through) plus synth chords.

(Oh and the Alan Smyth Separations details actually came out of my interview with him - wasn't quite appropriate to go into that level of detail in the book though, so I passed it all onto Will in the end. It would be great to get Ed Buller's perspective I agree, just couldn't track him down at the time.)

It's not a million miles away from Arial. Something like identifont.com might pin it down.

 

(Oh and the Alan Smyth Separations details actually came out of my interview with him - wasn't quite appropriate to go into that level of detail in the book though, so I passed it all onto Will in the end. It would be great to get Ed Buller's perspective I agree, just couldn't track him down at the time.)

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 There's more?! I loved that part of the book. Studio craft is so interesting. I think Ed possibly sampled the stylophone for SAL because the track is quite sequenced and required precision. Saying that, the stylophone 350s I have seems to be accurate enough for him to calculate the bpm from it and sequence around that. Who knows though. I'd love to read more from Ed Buller about HnH. It still sounds amazing to me, but I do like a lot of reverb which some saw as his downfall.