New Beaters

Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The range of lounge music encompasses beautiful music–influenced instrumentals, modern electronica (with chillout, and downtempo influences), while remaining thematically focused on its retro-space-age cultural elements…

Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The range of lounge music encompasses beautiful music–influenced instrumentals, modern electronica (with chillout, and downtempo influences), while remaining thematically focused on its retro-space-age cultural elements…

“Fabula Mendax” is based on manuscripts written in the 15th Century by Armande de Pange, a companion of Jehanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc). This is The Monochrome Set at its most ornate, and, much like Joan of Arc’s ensemble, features a myriad of fiddlers, pluckers, beaters, tinklers and wailers, surrounding a central core of notorious crackpots. The hauntingly melodic pop harks back to the early TMS period of “Eine Symphonie Des Grauens”, but is now complemented by a (periodically unemployed) vampire’s orchestra, whose cha-cha-charnel chiming careens into carnal rhyming chanting, while saints and demons trip lightly across the slick red fields of liberty. As with all TMS albums, “Fabula Mendax” is at once accessible and arcane, upbeat and dark, lush and spare, and with lyrics that as ever remain tantalisingly opaque.

Like Omigod! The 80s Pop Culture Box (Totally) is a seven-disc, 142-track box set of popular music hits of the 1980s. Released by Rhino Records in 2002, the box set was based on the success of Have a Nice Decade: The 70s Pop Culture Box, Rhino's box set covering the 1970s. Like Omigod! includes a 90-page booklet of cultural comment, a timeline for the decade, and liner notes for the tracks included in the set. As does Have a Nice Decade, the tracks tend to be from the lesser-known artists who were one-hit wonders, although music from the best-selling artists of the era are also included. In addition, many of the 1980s musical styles — rock, pop, country pop, new wave, funk, disco and rhythm and blues — are represented.