The The Soul Mining: C/D

Amazing stuff for someone so young. I have been hoping for far too long that this album will one day be "re-discovered" and Matt Johnson will earn the long overdue credit he deserves for this CLASSIC.

I loved Infected though.

What about "Burning Blue Soul" then? (Never heard it, good title though)

I miss seven or eight track albums. There's no room for filler.

"Burning Blue Soul" has a couple of decent tracks, but the production is meh. Although 4AD repackaged it to make it another The The album, it's better to start with Soulmining.

If I remember, it was kinda spoiled by two things:
1) The extra tracks were dull, and the version of "Perfect" wasn't as good as the single version
2) The final track builds and builds, and then uses the exact payoff line from "Don't know myself" by the Who.

Several came out a b-sides, but Matt probably did the right thing by not releasing the album itself.

Depressing fact: the The The "Greatest Hits" does not contain a single track from SM - just different (inferior) versions.

"Giant" is GIANT.

Seem to remember dling a supposed full tracklisting few years ago. Not worth spending a great amount of money on.

Never found a finished copy of the also-unreleased "Gun Sluts" (1997) though.

collection of singles in "actually containing singles" shocka

"Another year over and what have I done, all my aspirations have shrivelled in the sun" was just begging to be used as yearbook quote (or for that matter: "I'm just a symptom of the moral decay that's gnawing at the heart of the country")

The recently re-issued Gadgets LP has some cuts by Johnson, thought I don't have it front of me so I can't say how many, though I do remember his distinctive voice on one cut.

Just checked out http://www.thethe.com. Lotsa interviews, etc.

this may have been the first album i ever heard that showed me there was a world outside of what you heard on daytime radio 1 or read about in SMASH HITS. i was going out with my first ever girlfriend and she had this brother. he had SURFER ROSA. i preferred this.
still do.

matt j went all worthy and shouty on us in later years and
despite me liking them a lot at the time, the subsequent albums don't match up to either their critical appraisal or their status among
the gloomy would-be hip indie types circa 85-89.

i notice GIANT has crept up in balearic circles as a reference point, sort of like a uk BORN UNDER PUNCHES.

why is there no "..seven..." in the countdown at the start?

then again i too had the cassette version of SM with extras .. but the fragger died a long time ago - great album. keep meaning to get the cd versh .. and i actualyl like the re-recorded uncertain smile from the 90's - i like the basicness of it.

Now, just checked the sony connect store and there is a 25 minute track, 'In the AM (soundtrack from the film) - anyone know what this is ?!?

The rest of the album is great, also, as were the 2 singles after it. I found "Infected" to be a major let down.

There are also some ridiculously rare early singles that I have never heard.

This is the bonus track that made the box set cost an extra $45 over the price of the albums, due to a Sony manufacturing error. Cunts.

http://www.thethe.com/sections/library/interviews/mj_jmincon1.html

Talking about influences and roots.

Then I realized that it was my car he was in.

"This is the Day" was also on a favorite mix tape of mine, made from 45's borrowed from the jukebox at Lili's 21 (Hamtramck, MI). js probably enjoyed that tape, too.

He likes the full album version of the Dead's "Casey Jones" also.

and yes Foetus is indeed on SM under a diff alias (Frant Wants ??)

also - thomas leer has recently resurfaced with an album of freaky electronic music thats rather cool.

-- kit brash (kitbras...), January 12th, 2006 10:16 PM. (kit brash)

Yeah but the single versions are pale imitations of the better album versions. If "Uncertain Smile" is a "Greatest Hit" it's the one with the Jools Holland solo from the album.

Peter disagrees with Kit SHOCKA!

Anyway, Soul Mining = Classic. Burning Blue Soul = Classic (and great lo-fi production IMHO). Infected = Classicest of Classic. Mind Bomb = Classic.
From Dusk on, not so classic. Dunno if there are any duds as such, but he certainly seems to me to have been losing his edge from about then on.

... not that i think "Soul Mining" was that great but I was having a conversation with my brother over Xmas about how a friend of his had gotten into a silly argument about the respective merits of The The and Talk Talk - and we both agreed that, whereas The The were once considered the absolute dog's bollocks and virtually the NME's favourite band of all time, now nobody listens to them and it's Talk Talk who are the dog's bollocks.

REALLY?? are you sure??
i wouldn't have said that was ever true about NME,
but i'd love to read the reviews of INFECTED and SOUL MINING albums.

SOUL MINING was only album of the year no.25 in NME's poll that year
(6 places below randy newman!) and INFECTED no.32 in it's year, so... hmm.

the later production got better, the hits bigger, the videos more expensive, some of the singles were cracking but there' sno way he could better this.

better with or without PERFECT added on at the end? i say without.

My oldest son, when he was about 7-8, loved it whenever I played "This is the Day." He would mimic the bass line throughout.
I bought this record on the fly right after I read a positive review in Rolling Stone (when it was only half bad). I picked up the Smiths' debut the same day, if memory serves correct.

i have all his subsequent albums and love them; was this REALLY the best one? we've got it at home, i think.

http://www.thethe.com/sections/library/wtps/soul_papers.html

amazing reviews from the time.

i love Matts stuff, and listen to the last album a lot more than SM these days.
the fact that on a recent trip to london i spotted him leaving a pub beer garden while i was slurping a quick hair of dog, it was only after a few minutes of umming and arring i got up the nerve only to find out he had left. ho hum.
something i will regret for the rest of my life.

also, i could tell you that he is currently liasing with some fine people who normally deal with loops and samples .. but i have to keep schtum on that for the time being ..

nakedself is his best album IMO

and you say that without having heard Soul Mining?

so far

I loved Soul Mining so much that I ran out and bought ''If You Can't Save Yourself You Can't Save Your Soul'' the Some Bizarre compilation for the The The track Flesh and Bones. It was there I was exposed to Scarping Foetus Off The Wheel' The Only Good Christian Is A Dead Christian, surely an obligatory rite of passage for any 11 year old.

how's FLESH AND BONES?

out of their mind on pills the whole time they were during SOUL MINING. by matt and marc almond's admission. SOUL MINING and NON STOP EROTIC CABARET were 'of a piece' it seems.

Flesh and Bones is brilliant. It eventually turned up on the b-side of Heartland I think it was so I lost all the kudos of having a rare compilation-only copy. Naturally I had no-one to actually show off to about owning it in the first place.

yeah, Flesh And Bones is essential. I also repeat my love expressed upthread for the Soul Mining era B-sides collected on the cassette.

my vinyl copy ends with "Giant", but comes with a bonus 12" on "Perfect", which works just fine for me.

the 12'' of uncertain smile is really awful compared to the album version. especially if you are like me and you have heard the album version first. the flute and esp. the sax are nice but the drum machine and the shifting synth effects are really crap. all the energy and power of the song are sucked out. it seems much slower and it doesn't shine any more. when i read what the producer wrote on the recording i immediately imagined that his version was bollocks.

The song Uncertain Smile featured on Soul Mining, the subsequent The The album. A completely new recording was made back in London, which must have disappointed the punters who bought it after hearing the original single. Both at this remove and at the time, it sounds curiously confused and unfocused, as if trying for whatever reason to make a fresh statement of the song but unable to escape from the grip of the first single. I also wonder if it’s just a coincidence that the album producer’s royalty rate was lower than mine, possibly informing the managerial musical advice to the artist.(link)

people who are so full of themselves are almost always bullshit artists.

I loved Soul Mining so much that I ran out and bought ''If You Can't Save Yourself You Can't Save Your Soul'' the Some Bizarre compilation for the The The track Flesh and Bones. It was there I was exposed to Scarping Foetus Off The Wheel' The Only Good Christian Is A Dead Christian, surely an obligatory rite of passage for any 11 year old.

that compilation was my one xmas present when i was about 15 (yes .. thats my life folks). it is solely responsible for my subsequent Foetus, Cabaret Voltiare, The The collections.
I also, picked up Scatology by Coil, but went no further in that particular direction.

I still have the multiple inserts that came with the album - ie the blank sheet of paper which is declared as being the plans of the government or something like that !

great cover art as well.

yeah, that is easily one of my top ten ever compilations.

"yeah yeah yeaaah hurgh hurgh hurgh
yeah yeah yeah yeah
haa! ha!"

right on

Still in my personal all-time Top Ten, 25 years on. I had that cassette version too, so for me it has to end with "Giant", with "Perfect" as a bonus track on the other side.

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR TOMORROW ALL OF MY LIFE

Bimble wuvs u

with thomas leer, zeke manyika and jg thirlwell on the same track, you really couldn't go wrong.
― frenchbloke (frenchbloke), Friday, 13 January 2006 13:06 (3 years ago)

^^^otm

"GIANT" is the shit.

"GIANT" is the shit.

"yeah yeah yeaaah hurgh hurgh hurgh
yeah yeah yeah yeah
haa! ha!"

so so classic as i listen to it now. have not heard it since cassette disappeared circa 1986-7

Just randomly thought of a song off this today that I wished I had on my iPod - "I've Been Waiting For Tomorrow..."

no sign of 'Infected' coming out on DVD. weird.

Just downloaded a cache of career-spanning bootlegs. This band was always so good live.

Any of them include Giant from the 89 - 90 tour?

Yeah!

Here's one, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W0U6YFRUaA

Can you give me the show name that has it? Soundboard? I want that version with Johnny Marr doing disco wacka wacka.

Well, there's 10/2/89 at Brixton Academy, that's one. 3/13/90 Live in Japan has it. 12/7/90 at Royal Albert Hall has it (that may be the one that clip is from, from The The Versus The World).

Thanks!

good 20 minute interview with Steve Lamacq about Soul Mining

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p030wbgs

(..and with Matt too obvs)

i have told strictly kev that he, matt and jim foetus need to make an album together.
following the last dj food album, the three of them have seriously become a crew in recent times.
chances of this becoming a reality : 0.021 %
appparently the working grooves between jim and matt are very very different.
still, i think it could end up being a brilliant collaboration.

matt worships jim.

This album in particular needs a deluxe reissue, one of those big box sets including a disc of all the non-lp tracks from the period, a disc of remixes, a disc of demos and a live gig. It would sell more than you think.

The deluxe reissue came out less than 18 months ago, and evidently sold a lot less than you think

the recent boxset was not good.
no cd edition.
vinyl remastered from matt playing a vinyl edition on his own stereo !!
very few extra tracks and those that there were on vinyl only.

that is a travesty, this great album deserves better

I'm p sure the vinyl was remastered from original tapes, and the download version was from Johnson playing it on a super-fancy turntable

looks like you're right as usual :)

http://www.discogs.com/The-The-Soul-Mining/release/5829979

the tracklist of the second LP is baffling and disappointing though... no actual B-sides other than the instrumental 'Fruit Of The Heart", missing all of the Pornography Of Despair tracks, and missing some remixes.

So tell me about the reissue. I’m a sucker for a good box set and this is such a thing.

MJ: Well, the idea to do it as a box came from my most recent manager Cally who manages the Nick Drake estate and works with Bill Drummond. He represented me for about 12 or 13 years even though we’ve recently changed our relationship. He was responsible for the Nick Drake box sets and you’ll see the ReDISCovered logo on it, which is Cally’s thing. He went up and had the meeting with Sony. I hadn’t had any dealings with them since 2002 when I last had the tapes remastered by Howie Weinberg. Now I love Howie, he’s an old margarita drinking buddy of mine from New York and he’s a great masterer but he does love the compression… you’ve heard of the loudness wars right? Well, I’ve been guilty of that myself. I do like compression and would crank it up a little bit and I probably went over the top with that at the time because that’s how I was feeling at the time and I was living over there. Anyway, the idea with this one is more of a purist’s vision. And that’s why the tracks from the cassette aren’t on here. I wanted to go the purist route. This is Soul Mining complete without other stuff tacked on to it. So we went into Abbey Road to bake the tapes and I said to Alex Wharton who was mastering, "I don’t think I want to use that much compression if any, I want to hear how it actually sounds." We put it through the old EMI TG series mastering desk. And as we were listening to the tapes, he said, "This is fantastic. The tapes sound like they’re only a week old." And all we did was a little bit of EQ round about 17, 18, 19k. A couple of dbs here or there. Just a small amount. It was interesting to me. As I said, I hadn’t heard it for years and it blew me away. I was really proud of it. We did work bloody hard on that record. I like good craftsmanship. I like stuff that is built well and built to last. The dream is to make records that will be listened to years from now. Whether you achieve it or not is something else but that’s the dream. I love it when people write and tell me what it’s meant to them. That’s what it’s for. That’s the vindication.

http://thequietus.com/articles/15523-matt-johnson-interview-soul-mining-the-the

good perspective, thanks

Kin 'ell

Https://twitter.com/thethe/status/1267511424315731975

Holy shit.

if only he'd written any lyrics that could possibly pertain to this

(v glad he made it (so far) obv)

Jesus christ. Glad he pulled though.

*through, damnit

I keep staring at his throat

He will never sound the same, assuming he can still vocalize/sing

https://www.thethe.com/the-lowdown-lockdown/

Well, what a year 2020 is turning out to be. Viruses! Lockdowns! Riots! – And for me personally a close shave with the grim reaper.

There have been various rumours circulating about the state of my health recently so I thought I’d take this chance to clarify the situation.

Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone – from family and friends to friendly strangers – who have sent so many thoughtful messages of support. It has really kept my spirits up.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the skilled and dedicated NHS surgeons, doctors, nurses and staff at the London Royal Hospital for saving my life. Several weeks on and I’m now making good progress and recovering my old vim and vigour.

Now, I’m a naturally active person, with no underlying health issues and with similar weight, fitness and energy levels as in my 20s and 30s, so no one was more surprised than me to find myself trapped inside a hospital at the height of the Covid-19 crisis. It was like a surreal masked ball, not being able to see most people’s faces plus no family or friends of patients allowed in the hospital.

What happened was that a throat infection took an unexpected and freakish turn that could easily – if I wasn’t in the right place at the right time – have concluded with me checking-out a few days after the unfortunate Florian Schneider.

But despite my neck doubling in size and feeling like a vampire squid had taken up residence – expanding and tightening its tentacles throughout my throat and chest – I pleaded with the doctors not to slice me open in such a delicate area – “I’m a singer!” I gasped. “It’s my profession! Just give me more antibiotics!” The head surgeon and his team gathered around my bedside and gravely explained this was not a matter of tone of voice but of life and death.

Anyway, what followed was one the weirdest episodes I’ve experienced in many years and – as my friends and family can testify – I have a high capacity for weirdness. Let’s just say the general atmosphere experienced inside my morphine-drenched mind in those post-op days was like a combination of the space station in Tarkovsky’s Solaris, the hospital in Lars Von Trier’s The Kingdom, the gloomy foreboding of David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and perhaps some of the general paranoia from Evelyn Waugh’s The Ordeal Of Gilbert Pinfold. One of these days I may write about it in more detail.

But thankfully – despite me looking like I’d had a nighttime visit from a particularly vicious member of the Corleone family – the operation was a success. Doctor’s orders mean I cannot sing for the next six months and even when I can I’m not sure if I’ll sound like Howlin’ Wolf or Tiny Tim! Hopefully I’ll still sound like myself.

remarkably chipper considering! guess he's handled such darker mental places his whole life that medical emergencies seem emotionally trivial in comparison