Virgin Prunes - A New Form Of Beauty 1 - 4

Virgin Prunes - A New Form Of Beauty 1 - 4

As requested by Eden 263, New Form of Beauty stands as one of most audacious projects in pop history, even if the mainstream of popular culture has no idea who the Virgin Prunes are, or that it existed in the first place. New Form of Beauty, Pts. 1-4 represents early, pre-debut-LP offerings from Ireland's Virgin Prunes, a band that grew up alongside U2 -- in fact, vocalist Gavin Friday would often finish sets for Bono when he couldn't go the distance. The project was conceived in seven original parts, only four were ever released. New Form of Beauty captures very closely the controlled and often anarchic art damage that the band was doing in a live setting early on. Industrial sounds wrapped around more conventional guitar, bass, drum, and keyboard trappings, singers Gavin Friday and Guggi were both outrageously androgynous, utterly captivating front men. The band's influences range wide and far from folk songs to Throbbing Gristle to the dynamics of bands like Joy Division, PIL, and even Germany's Can, though the Prunes' sonic approach was utterly unique. It is nocturnal always, often nightmarish, like the nether soundtrack to a carnival sideshow, it is, to borrow from Jean Dubuffett, art brut , outsider art of high poetic and aesthetic quality even when it is falling apart. Highly recommended for its excess as well as its achievement.




A New Form Of Beauty 1
( Rough Trade "RT 089" 1981 as a 7")

Tracks :

1. Sandpaper Lullaby
2. Sleep / Fantasy Dreams




A New Form Of Beauty 2
(Rough Trade "RT 090" 1981 as a 10")

Tracks :

1. Come To Daddy
2. Sweet Home Under White Clouds
3. Sad World




A New Form Of Beauty 3
(Rough Trade "RT 099" 1981 as a 12")

Tracks :

Beast

1. Seven Bastard Suck

The Slow Children

2. Abbágall
3. Brain Damage
4. No Birds To Fly




A New Form Of Beauty 4
(Rough Trade "COPY 007" 1982 as a cassette)

Extracts from a performance at their “A New Form of Beauty 5” exhibition
at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, on 8 November 1981.


Tracks :

1.Din Glorious
2.Din Glorious

( I recorded the cassette as one track.)



A New Form Of Beauty 1 - 3

A New Form Of Beauty 4


enjoy.