Customer Reviews

Burning Blue Soul

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Even for a big admirer of Matt Johnson as me for many years now, even being "Soul Mining" the album I would take to a desert island, and still I often get amazed by the fact that "Burning Blue Soul" was entirely written and performed by a 16?! years old boy. His first work is brilliant and almost as consistent as the masterpiece above mentioned, Infected, Dusk or Mind Bomb. Not a single non-inspired moment, already the finest of the lyrics you can find on a musical album, all sorts of sounds and melodies gathered in a way so unique.

"Red Cinders in the Sand" is an instrumental display of talent, "Time Again for the Golden Sunset" or "Another Boy Drowning" are among my favourite songs from the band's catalogue. In resume, another timeless album by The The, indispensable in the collection of any fan of the band.

One of the finest psych releases of the 1980s, "Burning Blue Soul" came out of left field at the start of the decade as a Matt Johnson solo effort, and was only listed as a The The album after he made good with that group. In spite of the connection with that later project, "Burning Blue Soul" sounds quite distinct from successors like "Soul Mining" or "Dusk", and infinitely more experimental. The "songs" are largely just Johnson singing his soul-baring and darkly humorous lyrics over a hypnotically strummed electric guitar, reverbed beyond all bounds of logic, on top of which layer upon layer of extremely tripped-out tape loops (recorded backwards, sped up, slowed down, reverbed, etc) are gradually added to create a sonic tapestry that is dense and ethereal. Johnson knows when to keep his sounds from becoming too chaotic, and the almost mathematical precision with which he uses them to create moods of melancholy, wonder and just plain weirdness boggles the mind. His later albums with The The relied on far more conventional song structures and harsher "80s" sounds from the bass and drums (and yet they still sounded more alternative than the majority of product from that era), but he never again returned to the isolated, floating world he created here.

I first had the chance to listen to The The with Mind Bomb. Now I got all The The albums. Burning Blue Soul is the first album and the beginning of The The. All the instruments are played by Matt Johnson. The tracks are inividually highly emotional but the ordering makes it a whole masterpiece. The general atmosphere is pessimistic and incurable. I feel this emerges from the search of Matt Johnson for some musical expressability. The album starts with a very rythmical piece which resembles the evolution of man from tribes to civilized societies. Then deals with the awry social order and encounters of our times. If you like to feel music (not just listening) and think listening music is something serious I strongly recommend this album.

As I understand, Matt Johnson was only 16 yrs. old while made this great CD. Amazing. Back to the early 80's, Punk rock seemed to be in a big trouble, and punk bands who still acted in thoe days repeated themselves. The end of the old punk movement create a new musical movement -"The New wave". A lot of electronics, dark messages, and hard music, replaced the wild guitar-drum sound of the Punk. Today, I don't listen to most of these CD's. They sound monothonic and sometimes boring. BBS is different. It's interesting, not too heavy,intelegent and a fresh challenge to any listener. Johnson was one of the few musicians that made the 80's more interesting to rock fans, and BBS is probably one of his best and complete albums. After that he made about 3 good albums ("Infected", "Dusk" and "Mindbomb"), while the rest are so-so.

burning blue soul is the debut album of matt johnson, aka the the. he released it in 1981 under the artist name of matt johnson and re-released it in 1983 under the band, the the. the re-release is a little different from the 1981 album, with remixed tracks and the such. for the true blue the the fan, it is immediately apparant that this album is not as polished as the other albums; rougher, experimental and raw... yet still an impressive debut worthy of owning to complete your the the collection.

some tracks of interest are "another boy drowning," "song without an end," and "icing up."

i have to stress once again that this is not your typical the the masterpiece. some might find it very average. yet, in the defense of matt johnson, anything average for him would be considered genius for anyone else. i'd like to see bernard sumner create something half as brilliant as burning blue soul... that'll be the day!

SONG WITHOUT AN ENDING has to be the most gut-wrenching melody and groove Matt Johnson ever put to song. Johnson has a great voice, and he uses it very well here on that song and on this record for the first time. Johnson was also influenced by Throbbing Gristle; and around 1980/81 was working with Dome (Lewis/Gilbert of Wire). Experimental music lovers, look no further in The The's catalog. The sequencial flow of the album could be better, yet overall this record leaves a staggering impression of Johnson's ambition, talent and commitment. After this one, his albums got developed by Johnson introducing a more balanced accessibility into the production. 'Time Again For the Golden Sunset' reminds me of 'The Sinking Feeling' from Soul Mining (my first The The), however pre-dates it instead. An issue could be raised, yet I would say that Burning Blue does fit fairly well retroactively into the whole canon.

With the spawning of so many new Rock "forms" during the late 70's/early 80's, it's hard to really classify Matt Johnson's genre, but I would best describe it is as a mix of Alternative/New Wave/Industrial (and Burning Blue Soul was originally released under Matt Johnson's name, not The The's). BBS is luscious, dark and brooding, and what it lacks in production technique it more than makes up for in originality. Fresh for it's time, BBS still retains an edgy yet ethereal quality that holds up well some 20+ years later. While I have no way of verifying another reviewer's comments that Johnson wrote this when he was 16, it is certainly believable from a lyrical standpoint - the sense of "teenage angst", despair, and a "hopeless worldview" are prevalent throughout most of the cuts. Wikipedia has Johnson's DOB as 1961 which would put him at about 20 when BBS was released - but when the material was written is anybody's guess.

Musically, the production is at times coarse but that is part of the attractiveness of Burning Blue Soul. In fact, I would go further and say the echo-like "garage" effect is one of the CD's greatest strengths based on the mood it is attempting to create. It certainly sounds like the songs could have been recorded on a home-studio 8-track, if not a 4. Heavy on synthesizers and electric guitars with flange or chorus, there is nothing Johnson does that is "technically" amazing, but creatively BBS is a cutting edge album with a strange but powerful cohesiveness that is hard to explain, but there nonetheless. It far surpasses, IMHO, "Soul Mining", which clearly has more pop appeal and admittedly is a much cleaner production.

It's hard to be totally objective with this review. BBS was sort of a watershed album (yes, ALBUM) for me personally as it definitely influenced my own early songwriting/recording attempts. Listening to it today, it still has a razor-sharp quality even with the rough edges. My guess is, Burning Blue Soul was a quite personal journey for Johnson, but of course that is just a guess. I will stop short of using the word "genius"...but this music comes awfully close to it.

Note: I believe I read somewhere that the mix is quite different under the "The The" release, since I have the original Matt Johnson I cant' comment on that.