Aztec Camera's debut album, High Land, Hard Rain was produced by John Brand and Bernie Clarke for the Rough Trade record label. The album was released in April 1983 and was distributed in different formats on Domino Recording Co. Ltd. in the US (in addition to Sire); WEA and Celluloid in France; Nuevos Medios in Spain; Powderworks in Australia; MVM Records in Portugal; and WEA for a general European release. [3] The album was successful, garnering significant critical acclaim, and peaked at number 129 on the Billboard 200. [7] Frame later revealed that the song " Oblivious" was consciously written as a Top of the Pops-type pop song and received a corresponding degree of popularity. [8] I think it was Talking Heads and Van Halen. Apart from that I don’t remember. I wish I could remember. Some touches like the occasional Syndrums were of the period, but listening to the album these days, there’s nothing that I think that seems particularly or distractingly dated. Aztec Camera - High Land, Hard Rain (2013, Gatefold, Vinyl)". Discogs . Retrieved 14 February 2020.

With a new two-disc deluxe anniversary edition, High Land, Hard Rain is giving a gem of its period a reintroduction. As Frame relates below, the album was sadly not earmarked as a priority for its handlers at the time, even if its songs revealed that the man who wrote and sang them was entering the music scene at the top of his game. Frame explained in May 2014 that the tour was arranged after he had reconnected with his former Aztec Camera manager, Johnson, who received a call from a prominent UK promoter who asked Frame if he was interested in the concept—Frame agreed to the tour at the time he was first asked. [12] Musical style [ edit ] I’d been in that indie ghetto since I was 16, and by the time I was 19-20, I wanted to move on. I wanted to try something different, and I wanted to try a different way of making records, and I wanted the records to sound better.

When asked in April 2014 about reconnecting with a record that he wrote as a teenager while around the age of 50 years, Frame replied: Aztec Camera interview 1988 #1" (Video upload). megumino2 on YouTube. Google, Inc. 28 July 2009. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 . Retrieved 29 May 2014. Frame explained in August 2014 that he contemplated the conception of Love during a three-year hiatus following the release of Knife. Frame said that he moved even further away from the British "indie ethic" and was listening to the "pop end of hip hop", including artists such as Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Cherrelle, the Force MDs and Alexander O'Neal. Frame wanted to make a record based on such influences and "Working in a Goldmine" was the first song to achieve this aspiration. [16]

It was formed in a town called East Kilbride [in Scotland]. It’s just about nine miles south of Glasgow. We formed there and made our first couple of singles there and then finally moved to London about two years later. Sean Michaels (28 August 2013). "Roddy Frame to perform Aztec Camera's High Land, Hard Rain in full". The Guardian . Retrieved 29 August 2013.Roddy Frame – Live – Crossing Newbury Street, Paisley Abbey 27-10-12" (Video upload). YouTube. Google Inc. 30 October 2012. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 . Retrieved 20 April 2014. Roddy Frame – Down The Dip and Birth Of The True live 2006" (Video upload). Stevebhoy7 on YouTube. Google Inc. 23 June 2008. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 . Retrieved 5 July 2014. Emily Barker (24 October 2013). "The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time: 300-201". NME . Retrieved 23 March 2023. Roddy Frame – Live – Down The Dip, Ramsbottom Festival 16-09-12" (Video upload). k1rk1c on YouTube. Google Inc. 18 September 2012. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 . Retrieved 5 July 2014. Davis, Hays Aztec Camera - Roddy Frame on 1983’s “High Land, Hard Rain” Under The Radar 9 April 2014

a b Kevin Korber (20 February 2014). " "Anyone Can Do It, So We Did": An Interview With Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera". Pop Matters. PopMatters Media, Inc . Retrieved 17 April 2014. I liked what he did when he was in the Yellow Magic Orchestra, and I also liked that album where he plays the music from Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence on piano. That's where you realise that the atmosphere around his compositions is actually in the writing – it's got nothing to do with synthesisers. [20] Frame wasn’t entirely alone. Orange Juice—Aztec Camera’s close comrades on the Glasgow indie label Postcard Records—had already combined some of these same elements before Frame made his Postcard debut, the 1981 single “Just Like Gold.” And the NME’s famous C81 cassette compilation included, alongside Aztec Camera and Orange Juice, Scritti Politti’s “The ‘Sweetest Girl’”, Green Gartside’s first foray into post-punk soulfulness. Rather than an outgrowth of grayish post-punk, though, Aztec Camera was a negative afterimage rendered in pastels. By the time “Pillar to Post,” the group’s first single for Rough Trade, came out in 1982, Frame and crew had become labelmates with another young quartet that featured jangling guitars, crooned vocals, and a snappy rhythm section: the Smiths. I’d love to know what was on that list to be pushed. I can imagine there being a few artists who probably aren’t seeing a deluxe anniversary edition of their album being released this year.k1rk1c (30 October 2012). "Roddy Frame – Live – How Men Are, Paisley Abbey 27-10-12" (Video upload). k1rk1c on YouTube. Google, Inc. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 . Retrieved 30 May 2014. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list ( link) Christgau, Robert (1990). "Aztec Camera: High Land, Hard Rain". Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s. Pantheon Books. p.43. ISBN 0-679-73015-X . Retrieved 22 May 2015. Ham, Robert (4 February 2014). "Aztec Camera: High Land, Hard Rain 30th Anniversary Reissue". Paste . Retrieved 16 November 2021. And that’s too bad. It wasn’t hard at the time for me to imagine “Oblivious” getting some significant airplay if they’d tried. a b c "Aztec Camera interview 1988 #1" (Video upload). megumino2 on YouTube. Google, Inc. 28 July 2009. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 . Retrieved 29 May 2014.