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)

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?!

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.

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.)

 

(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.