B-MOVIE - Volume 1: Remembrance Days

Original recordings Dead Good Records 1980
Compilation CD Dead Good Records 1991



"Formed in Mansfield Nottinghamshire circa 1979... Critically acclaimed after releases on local label Dead Good Records, the band signed to Some Bizarre and released the brilliant trio of new wave singles Marilyn Dreams, Nowhere Girl and Remembrance Day. Every one an indie classic! The band played some great gigs and built a strong live following but an album failed to materialise and band members left at the end of 1983. Steve Hovington and Paul Statham carried on with new member Martin Winter and secured a deal with Sire Records. The singles A Letter From Afar and Switch On Switch Off were followed by the debut album Forever Running in 1985. The band disintergrated after this with Hovington forming the band ONE and Statham going on to work with Peter Murphy for a number of years. Various retrospectives and session albums have been released since, whilst the band have played live again recently too..."
(myspace.com/bmovieuk)

"A handy collection of the band's earliest efforts, ranging from extremely early compilation appearances to various EPs, Remembrance Days is certainly a fans-only experience. That said, at worst it's still enjoyably derivative post-punk (certainly the first couple of cuts have major Joy Division / Cure tones going in a slightly more pop vein) and at best it's sparkling. Admittedly, maybe the borrowing went both ways - while it doesn't sound similar at all, the fact that the band had a song called Drowning Man a year before a similarly titled cut turned up on The Cure's Faith is an amusing note of history. Rick Holliday's keyboards definitely give the band more of an individual voice, and while in the light of history his parts sound terribly thin and restrained (certainly he's no Brian Eno circa Roxy Music), his parts on The Soldier Stood Alone and other songs work well enough. That said, nothing can quite help the too-earnest-for-its-own good Institution Walls, but the music does its best all around. The bandmembers themselves take the opportunity to rearrange the running order of the original Nowhere Girl EP into new form, and there's a wonderfully curious bonus - a variety of studio snippets as the band tunes up and figures out what to record or try next".
(Ned Raggett, All-Music Guide)

ENJOY


Remembrance Day