Mnakwethu Happily Ever After

Biffy Clyro release the surprise new project The Myth of the Happily Ever After. The record is a homegrown project that represents a reaction to their #1 album A Celebration of Endings and a rapid emotional response to the turmoil of the past year. It is the ying to the yang of A Celebration, the other-side-of-a-coin, a before-and-after comparison: their early optimism of 2020 having been brought back to earth with a resounding thud. It’s the product of a strange and cruel time in our lives, but one that ultimately reinvigorated Biffy Clyro.

Randy Hostetler - Happily Ever After (1999) {Frog Peak Music FP008}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 203 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 109 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 51 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1999 Frog Peak Music | FP008
Experimental / Non-Music / Sound Art / Spoken Word / Contemporary / Sound Collage

Within his short life span, Randy Hostetler (he died in 1996 at age 32) released very little music and even the material issued by friends after his death doesn't count for much (in terms of quantity). The most striking piece he composed would have to be "Happily Ever After," a 45-minute speech-based work. Between May and December 1986, Hostetler interviewed 66 persons (family members, friends, friends of friends) asking them to tell a story. Some went for fictional stories, others revealed personal experiences, but most used the traditional canvas beginning with "Once upon a time…" and ending with "…happily ever after."

For American ears only, in the years before a new deal with Elektra finally granted the Cure the access to the airwaves that they'd all but given up dreaming of, …Happily Ever After is nothing less than a two-for-one repackaging of the band's second and third European albums, the brooding gloom of Seventeen Seconds and the affirmative darkness of Faith. It makes for discomforting listening, both for newcomers to the sound of the early group and for fans more accustomed to experiencing the two records in separate sittings. Together with the band's fourth album, Pornography, the two LPs here were the sound of the Cure racing to distance themselves not simply from their early reputation as a moody power pop band, but also from any of the other comparisons, compadres, and contemporaries that the post-punk scene could throw at them. Seventeen Seconds, one U.K. review famously remarked, was the sound of the band sitting in a dark room, staring at clocks. Faith was what happened when those clocks stopped.