A Walk Across The Rooftops

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MacDonald, Bruno (2006). "The Blue Nile: A Walk Across the Rooftops". In Dimery, Robert (ed.). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Universe Publishing. p.508. ISBN 978-0-7893-1371-3. Still a landmark, still high, still somehow intangible: The Blue Nile didn’t sound or function like any normal band. As it turned out, when the time was right they wouldn’t need to look for a deal. RSO had donated cash to record more songs with Calum Malcolm, whose friendship with Ivor Tiefenbrun, founder of audio equipment company Linn Products, meant some of their gear had been installed at Castlesound. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( September 2018) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) As a side note, to keep things in context for younger listeners or for those of us who have forgotten, it must be remembered that in 1983 samplers as we know them did not exist. All of the sounds on the recording had to be physically played and recorded on snippets of tape and then edited and cut and finally taped together to create the masters. This endeavor was pain staking and slow. The exacting standards and obsession over every detail by the band also added to the time it took to record the album, but that commitment is what made it so good. Recording Engineer Malcolm recalls of the period of recording, “ They were always particularly sensitive to not doing the wrong thing and making sure it had the absolutely right emotional impact.” Thankfully they had a record label that possessed the necessary patience to wait for the end result. The album would finally debut in May of 1984.

For all the crafted grandeur of their second album it should be said that by the end of Hats salvation appears in the form of an “ordinary girl” rather like the bird-like creature in Joyce’s Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man. Someone who can “make the world alright” no superwoman or exotic creature needing to be pursued or attained, by gum. They’d be so successful at maintaining this low profile Buchanan would later admit to The Herald that “people I went to school with have recommended the records to me… We kept out of the way because I wanted people to think about a better world. I didn’t want them to be thinking about me.” The last verse of Easter Parade…” says Calum Malcolm today, “isn’t that a bit of a moment?” If he’s wrong, that’s only because the entire song, built around little more than a piano, the slightest of electronic embellishments and wistfully nostalgic lyrics – “In the bureau typewriters quiet/ Confetti falls from every window” – is heart-stoppingly beautiful. “It’s a Sunday song, something with a stillness in it,” Buchanan told NME’s Richard Cook in May 1984. “It would be blasphemous of me to say it’s a holy song in any way, but that’s something that was in our minds.”

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Two decades later he offered The Herald niceties more telling of the group’s character: “We didn’t say, ‘That’s fine, it’s good enough, let’s go out and get laid.’ We’d look at each other and say, ‘Is that right? No? Right, see you Monday.’ People talk about us as if it’s self-indulgent, but there were a lot of sacrifices. I was not in a jacuzzi. I was in a studio in East Lothian!” Read more: Making The Sundays’ Reading, Writing & Arithmetic Despite the movement of the music, Hats is an album in stasis. The Blue Nile understand that, like all good theater, relationships are inextricably linked to their setting, and the characters on Hats are prisoners to it, escaping only in fantasy. “Walk me into town/The ferry will be there to carry us away into the air,” Buchanan sings in “Over the Hillside.” “Let’s walk in the cool evening light/Wrong or right/Be at my side,” he pleads in “The Downtown Lights.” “I pray for love coming out all right,” he sings in the climactic final verse of “Let’s Go Out Tonight.” Then he cries out the title as one final desperate attempt to save something that’s already gone. It’s like a miracle that has been turned into a marketing factor. I’m absolutely dumbfounded by it. Every record should be compared to silence – silence is perfect, what are you going to put on it?”

Albums to Hear Before You Die – Artists beginning with B (part 1)". The Guardian. 17 November 2007. p.10 (supplement) . Retrieved 30 July 2015. BLUE NILE | full Official Chart History | Official Charts Company". www.officialcharts.com . Retrieved 1 January 2022. Even the frustrations, perhaps of romance or maybe of wider permanent self-acceptance and illustrated by the lyric “Stop/Go/Stop/Go” suggest automobile traffic as much as human pedestrians. Hats sold better in the UK than A Walk… and in the US A&M records used a toll-free number in an ad to give away free copies (although presumably home-taping was still killing music). No production values could hope to distract from Buchanan’s voice, though, the anguish and sadness being impossible to conceal or disguise. The album has some excellent uptempo moments such as “Headlights on The Parade” when all the yearning seems to reach a joyful crescendo of sorts, but it must be said that anyone who wants a record which provides a pretty unrelenting opportunity to really wallow in gorgeous, sublime, melancholy should dive into this one. Things arguably get a bit out of balance on “Let’s Go Out Tonight” where the sluggish pace and mournfulness seem to contradict the title – and no one in their right mind would wish to go out with Buchanan in that state. He sounds morose to the point of being incapable of even getting his round in. Virgin stepped in to distribute the record, and, driven by impassioned word of mouth and critical acclaim – Melody Maker called it “stunning” and “mesmeric”, while NME praised “music to shade your dreamtime in subtle colours” – sales soon defied all expectations. They only made four albums in 20 years, so The Blue Nile’s every record is precious. but the Scottish trio’s debut, A Walk Across The Rooftops, offered an as yet unsurpassed strain of sober but stirring synth-pop…

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Five months later, though, they emerged from Castlesound, and – thanks to Buchanan’s deeply moving delivery, the band’s startlingly bare arrangements and an overall, undeniably fastidious attention to detail – it soon became clear that, despite only boasting seven songs, A Walk Across The Rooftops was going to have long legs. Rudden, Bernard (director) (1991). Flags and Fences (television documentary). Virgin Records Media Ltd./ BBC Scotland. 15:38 minutes in. A Walk Across the Rooftops’ first single, and one of Buchanan’s more enigmatic lyrics, Stay is filled with inscrutable images from its opening line, “I’m taking off this party hat”, onwards: “Red guitar is broken,” “Candy girls want candy boxes,” “Summer girls in disarray/ Can be so free and easy now.” “ Stay, I think, is a more straightforwardly romantic song,” Buchanan informed Johnnie Walker. “I think maybe at the same point the protagonist is reflecting on something simple that he’s lost within himself, and that’s the grounds for his appeal.” a b Robinson, Tom (presenter) (9 June 2012). Paul Buchanan interview with Tom Robinson (radio broadcast). London, England: BBC 6 Music. On its release, A Walk Across the Rooftops gained widespread acclaim from music critics for its mixture of sparse, detailed electronic sounds and Buchanan's soulful vocals, later described as a "fusion of chilly technology and a pitch of confessional, romantic soul". [20] In 1984, the band gained greater exposure in Europe, with the videos for their two singles, "Stay" and "Tinseltown in the Rain", often shown on the video channel Music Box. The band's profile began to grow, although its existence remained precarious. Buchanan commented, "I've always found it strange that people missed the 'punk' aspect of A Walk Across the Rooftops. We were living in a flat in Glasgow with no hot water. We barely knew what we were doing and that was very liberating." [17] Hats (1985–1990) [ edit ]

a b Mason, Stewart. " A Walk Across the Rooftops – The Blue Nile". AllMusic . Retrieved 16 December 2016. We wanted to take it slowly and have a result worth listening to,” Bell nevertheless told Melody Maker, while Buchanan advised NME’s Richard Cook around the same time that, “Our way is just to persevere, working 16 hours

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Boyhood friends Paul Buchanan and Robert Bell grew up in Glasgow, Scotland and started The Blue Nile in 1981. The two had both attended the University of Glasgow where Buchanan earned a degree in Literature and Medieval History and Bell a degree in Mathematics. Buchanan’s father was a semi professional musician and Paul grew up surrounded by music but only thought of creating a band after finishing college. It was in college that Buchanan and Bell met and befriended the third member of their band, Paul Joseph Moore. Moore had a degree in electronics from The University of Glasgow and had been playing around with synthesizers throughout his college career. The trio formed McIntyre the first incarnation of their band shortly after graduation and had planned to recruit more members. Now remastered (for once, the sound being both brittle and big, that null word has value) and reissued with added rarities (as is its sublime 1989 successor, Hats), its hopeful melancholy transcends its era like an Edward Hopper painting. Synthesisers, the 80s’ new toy, abound, but are used with such naïve grace, over rhythms both simple and circuitous, that they refuse to date. Complicating matters further still – on top of visits, Malcolm reveals, by The Krankies’ “magnificent and inspiring” producer, Peter Kerr, who would drop in “encouraging us and offering sage advice on ‘the business’ of the record business!” – samplers were still a luxury, so every unfamiliar sound on the record had to be played and recorded, then painstakingly edited on tape, while “each drum part,” Malcolm stresses, “had to be manually sync’d by hitting a button on Paul’s box in time.” NME placed A Walk Across the Rooftops at number 28 in its critics' list of albums of the year in 1984, while the single "Tinseltown in the Rain" placed at number 27 in the equivalent singles list. [32] Buchanan and Bell toured England and Scotland in May and June 2006, followed by Scotland and Ireland in November 2006, billed as "Paul Buchanan sings the songs of the Blue Nile", refraining from simply calling themselves the Blue Nile as a mark of respect for Moore's absence. The band consisted of Buchanan on vocals and guitar, Bell on bass guitar and keyboards, Alan Cuthbertson and Brendan Smith on keyboards, Stuart McCredie on guitar, and Liam Bradley on drums. On 14 July 2007, Buchanan and Bell played at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester as part of the Manchester International Festival. In July 2008, the band played shows at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Somerset House in London and the Radisson Hotel in Galway.

Cranna, Ian (10–23 May 1984). "The Blue Nile: A Walk Across the Rooftops". Smash Hits. Vol.6, no.9. p.27. The band members have also gained a reputation for their avoidance of publicity, their idiosyncratic dealings with the recording industry and their perfectionism and slow work rate, which has resulted in the release of just four albums since the group's formation in 1981. The group appears to have disbanded since the release of the fourth album High in 2004, although there has never been any official confirmation.B eing able to listen to music, and being able to talk to each other through music, is like being able to walk on air,” The members of the Blue Nile met while they were students at the University of Glasgow. After graduating and easing into an uninspiring teaching gig, Buchanan says he and his friends turned to music in search of a career that they “could be instinctive about.” With Buchanan on guitar and vocals, Paul Joseph “PJ” Moore on keyboards and synth, and Robert Bell on bass, they recruited a drum machine as their fourth member.