The Shadow Ring Put The Music In Its Coffin

Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, the Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on theinternational musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rockoutfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eightLPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sidesof the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning this yearwith the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre-Shadow Ring tape The Cat & Bells Club(1992), Blank Forms Editions is conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group, includinga multi-year LP reissue effort and a forthcoming comprehensive CD box set and an over fivehundred page book.Recorded in summer of 1994 at S.H.P studios (frontman Graham Lambkin's parents' home), thegroup's sophomore record Put the Music In Its Coffin is a more sinister, saturnine affair than theirdebut City Lights. Coffin was many listeners' introduction to the Shadow Ring, who had hithertoself-released their music, courting a steady stable of international fans through the magazine andmail-order catalog Forced Exposure. For their follow-up, the duo reached out to the ascendingPhiladelphia label Siltbreeze, whose eclectic roster of sneering, low-fidelity rock and noise connecteddisparate subterranean scenes from rust-belt America to the English Midlands, Dunedin, andbeyond. As luck would have it, Siltbreeze proprietor Tom Lax was already a fan of the band's firstrecord and arranged to release both a 7" and their "difficult second album." The connection provedto run deeper than vinyl_within six months, Lax would pick up the pair from the airport for theirspring 1995 US tour. This episode marked not only their first trip to the States but their first liveperformances at all, formally introducing the Shadow Ring to the American underground andsolidifying the allure of the Folkestone pair.From the get-go...