Everything Picture (Deluxe Edition)

By A Mystery Man Writer

Description

If you purchase the vinyl edition on Bandcamp, it will be supplied directly by the band and will include exclusive extras (Postcard set and sticker). Ultrasound are reissuing their ambitious debut album ‘Everything Picture’ via One Little Independent Records. The reissue boxset will feature ‘Everything Picture’ the double album, an extra two records featuring a variety of B-sides and singles, and a CD of live and session tracks. As well, a 26-page booklet and poster will be included. Forming in 1996, British quartet Ultrasound gained quick notoriety, were eagerly courted by major labels, and began making waves with their grandiose glam-meets-prog live performances. In 1999 they released their anticipated, monolithic, and wildly creative ‘Everything Picture’ with Nude Records, a feat of considerable scale which may have failed to fulfil expectations they might be the next Oasis but ultimately earned them a dedicated cult following and the long-term critical acclaim they always hoped it would. “Everything Picture was made with future generations in mind”, says frontman Andrew “Tiny” Wood, “so it is so appropriate that it should be re-issued, in a more complete form, to be discovered and re-discovered in future times. We were aware that the post-Britpop presence of the early millennium might not get it. Many did, and many more grew and developed with it as it grew and developed a life of its own”. The uncompromising ‘Everything Picture’ soars from cinematic, layered textures to audacious rock n roll, with its raucously distorted guitars that sweep abrasively over anthemic choruses and a kinetic rhythm section. From the scopious opening of ‘Cross My Heart’ that makes the bands intentions perfectly clear from the offset to the dynamic attack of blistering riffs and euphoric vocal harmonies of ‘Stay Young’, the vice-tight bass and darkly joyous ‘Fame Thing’, the pulsating electronics and searing lead of disc 2 opener ‘Aire & Calder’ and ahead, the LP is a far-reaching onslaught of powerful production, bristling with ideas and invention. Alongside chart recognition for a number of their singles including ‘Best Wishes’, ‘Stay Young’ and ‘Floodlit World’, Ultrasound are also remembered for a renowned performance at Glastonbury Festival in 1998 during a torrential downpour, a live recording of which is also included in this deluxe reissue. Quickly following the release of ‘Everything Picture’, and amidst a myriad of press attention, the band broke up. Now, we’re given the opportunity to revisit this semi-forgotten, extensive classic alongside even more of their experimental catalog. Bassist Vanessa Best reflects; “Above my fireplace is the last remaining original canvas of the Everything Picture artwork. Painted by us all in Jane Savidge and John Bests (no relation) office in Camden. I have carried it around for nearly 25 years from storage lock-up to garage, to every flat I have lived in and now it is in pride of place in my house by the sea. I suppose it is a kind of historical rock and roll cave painting, with pieces of our energy in it. I forgive all of its awkwardness, in favour of celebrating a truly heart-stopping, courageous piece of work. Standing tall; exposed, vulnerable, defiant, proud, and desperately trying to say… everything. Oh, my aching heart!” -- “*The* greatest album of the nineties – a bombastic post-prog double LP of magnificently overreaching proportions and ambitions” – NME “All the force of Definitely Maybe, all the smeared eyeliner of Generation Terrorists, a lot of the grandeur of Dog Man Star, and all the vulnerability of well, no one was really doing vulnerable, but it had vulnerability too” – Drowned In Sound