Sandals - Rite To Silence



London-based acid jazz quartet the Sandals only lasted for one album, but their ability to sign with a major label and score a pop hit with their single "Feet" was an early indication that trendy club music could comfortably move from the hipster fringes into the mainstream. Naturally, some despise them for this, but the group's two releases, the full-length Rite to Silence and the EP Cracked, are superb early-'90s dance records.

The roots of the Sandals are in the South London club scene of the mid-'80s. Ian Simmonds, Derek Delves, Will Blanchard, and John Harris were friends who met round the clubs, clothing stores, record stalls, and other focal points of the local nightlife. Delves ran a weekly club night called Violets that grew to include spoken word and performance art as well as painting and photography exhibits. In 1990, the foursome opened a stall called Rich and Strange in London's Trocadero, selling records, books, and clothes to like-minded hipsters. As they ran the shop, the foursome also began rehearing in its storage room, with Delves on lead vocals and percussion, Harris on various reed instruments, Simmonds on bass, and Blanchard on drums. (Interestingly, the group never had a full-time guitar or keyboard player, preferring to deputize friends on a song-by-song basis.)

Eddie Piller, owner of London's Acid Jazz Records, became the Sandals' manager in 1991, organizing both an exhibition of the group's artwork in Los Angeles' Marquart Gallery, and a set of demos with producers Paul Daley and Neil Barnes (also known as Leftfield) that attracted the attention of London Records. Although the group was dubious about the implications of signing with a major label, most of them were married and starting families, and so the lure of a large paycheck proved irresistible. London released Rite to Silence, preceded by the single "Profound Gas," in early 1994. The second single, "Feet," was a hit and the album got generally positive reviews. But the A&R executive who signed the Sandals left the company shortly after the album's release, and the band felt that his replacement neither enjoyed nor understood their music. After an EP, 1995's Cracked, that is now seen by some as one of the essential early documents of trip-hop, the Sandals recorded a new album with Luke Gordon, aka Spacer, who had produced the EP. London rejected the album and the group, already suffering internal dissent, split up in early 1996. Ian Simmonds went on to release several well-received, jazz-oriented solo records under his own name and the pseudonym Juryman, and formed his own ATL label, short for "All That's Left," a rueful comment on the group's fractious demise. Derek Delves worked with United Future Organization, while Will Blanchard drummed for both Dot Allison and Beth Orton.

01 Feet
02 Nothing
03 No Movement
04 Change
05 Ardens Bud
06 We Wanna Live
07 We Don't Wanna Be the Ones to Take the Blame
08 Lovewood
09 Here Comes the Sign
10 Profound Dub

Get The Sandals - Rite To Silence At Amazon

dl in comments...

7 comments:

aj said...

dl = http://rapidshare.de/files/36302476/sandals_-_rite_to_silence__1994_.zip

pw = camponesa

Anonymous said...

Hey AcidJazzy, this is a nice little site which I have just discovered... most of the early dl links are dead however and this is most upsetting :-( --- PLEASE PLEASE RE-ISSUE THE FILES ---- most needed ;-) thanx (mainly the rapidshare.de links)

Anonymous said...

One of the few albums I really missed in my collection, thanks very much for posting it! :-)

Anonymous said...

would you please re:Up this thing... just thought i found it...but....

Anonymous said...

would you please re-upload this masterpiece again... please?

strangetrader said...

can you tell me what happened to john harris?

Anonymous said...

I FOUND IT HERE..!!!
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GWN4CS4A

What is Acid Jazz?

Acid jazz (also known as club jazz) is a musical genre that combines elements of soul music, funk, disco, particularly looping beats and modal harmony. It developed over the 1980s and 1990s and could be seen as tacking the sound of jazz-funk onto electronic dance/pop music.

The compositions of groups such as The Brand New Heavies and Incognito often feature chord structures usually associated with Jazz music. The Heavies in particular were known in their early years for beginning their songs as catchy pop and rapidly steering them into jazz territory before "resolving" the composition and thus not losing any pop listeners but successfully "exposing" them to jazz elements in "baby steps".

The acid jazz "movement" is also seen as a "revival" of jazz-funk or jazz fusion or soul jazz by leading DJs such as Norman Jay or Gilles Peterson or Patrick Forge, also known as "rare groove crate diggers".