A Walk Across The Rooftops

Product Information

a b White, Timothy (20 April 1996). "The Blue Nile: A Separate 'Peace' ". Billboard. Vol.108, no.16. New York City, USA: Nielsen Company. p.5. Two decades later he offered The Herald niceties more telling of the group’s character: “We didn’t say, ‘That’s fine, it’s good enough, let’s go out and get laid.’ We’d look at each other and say, ‘Is that right? No? Right, see you Monday.’ People talk about us as if it’s self-indulgent, but there were a lot of sacrifices. I was not in a jacuzzi. I was in a studio in East Lothian!” Read more: Making The Sundays’ Reading, Writing & Arithmetic Like the later work of the like-minded, if dramatically dissimilar, Talk Talk – whose Mark Hollis once famously said, “Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note… and don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it” – the record embraces peace and quiet so much they’re virtually its central focus. Its poignant sentimentality, meanwhile, skilfully, solemnly swerves the saccharine.

Belcher, David (16 February 1996). "Digging up a rare new jewel from the Nile". The Herald. Glasgow, Scotland: Caledonian Newspaper Publishing . Retrieved 4 April 2013. From his perspective, Tiefenbrun later pointed out admiringly, “Nothing would persuade them to do anything other than what they were doing,” but the band have disputed their reputation for perfectionism. B eing able to listen to music, and being able to talk to each other through music, is like being able to walk on air,” Paul Buchanan once told Graeme Thomson of Scotland’s The Herald, basking in the glow of his first Top 10 hit, albeit scored as guest vocalist on Texas’ Sleep two years after his own band had released what appears to have been their swansong, 2004’s High.

Tracks

What The Blue Nile did not attain in popular standing it did accomplish in generating admiration from sophisticated musicphiles of that time and since. One of the main keys to The Blue Nile’s allure was their use of minimalism. They excelled in the art of using silence as much as the musical notes in their compositions to convey feeling. The beauty of their entire discography is the unassuming and uncontrived intelligence of their work. It is complex technology moored to palpable emotional content. Like an Edward Hopper painting but in musical form, where isolation, dreams and sadness are a universal language. The band captured those truths and conveyed them in their music with sonics and imagery that harkened to wet streets, forlorn parades, disappointed lovers and rooftop musings. A Walk Across the Rooftops’ first single, and one of Buchanan’s more enigmatic lyrics, Stay is filled with inscrutable images from its opening line, “I’m taking off this party hat”, onwards: “Red guitar is broken,” “Candy girls want candy boxes,” “Summer girls in disarray/ Can be so free and easy now.” “ Stay, I think, is a more straightforwardly romantic song,” Buchanan informed Johnnie Walker. “I think maybe at the same point the protagonist is reflecting on something simple that he’s lost within himself, and that’s the grounds for his appeal.” Almost four decades later, despite their best efforts, people do think about The Blue Nile, and their debut remains widely revered, a testimony to this discreet, inspired band’s dedication and determination.

The last verse of Easter Parade…” says Calum Malcolm today, “isn’t that a bit of a moment?” If he’s wrong, that’s only because the entire song, built around little more than a piano, the slightest of electronic embellishments and wistfully nostalgic lyrics – “In the bureau typewriters quiet/ Confetti falls from every window” – is heart-stoppingly beautiful. “It’s a Sunday song, something with a stillness in it,” Buchanan told NME’s Richard Cook in May 1984. “It would be blasphemous of me to say it’s a holy song in any way, but that’s something that was in our minds.” a b Mason, Stewart. " A Walk Across the Rooftops – The Blue Nile". AllMusic . Retrieved 16 December 2016. Despite the movement of the music, Hats is an album in stasis. The Blue Nile understand that, like all good theater, relationships are inextricably linked to their setting, and the characters on Hats are prisoners to it, escaping only in fantasy. “Walk me into town/The ferry will be there to carry us away into the air,” Buchanan sings in “Over the Hillside.” “Let’s walk in the cool evening light/Wrong or right/Be at my side,” he pleads in “The Downtown Lights.” “I pray for love coming out all right,” he sings in the climactic final verse of “Let’s Go Out Tonight.” Then he cries out the title as one final desperate attempt to save something that’s already gone. By 1990, however, Irish broadcaster Dave Fanning was suggesting on air that 80,000 copies had been shifted. “It’s sold a lot more than that, actually,” Buchanan modestly corrected him. “I think we just don’t want to attract attention to any thoughts about ourselves.”To listen closely to the Blue Nile is to become a part of the scenery. In this way, Buchanan’s metaphor about the time between albums comes alive. The long gestation of each record suggests, as in the early stages of a relationship, a sharpening of the senses, getting lost in a world that’s getting smaller around you. You want to do it right this time. The Blue Nile’s music also sounds like falling in love, slow and starry-eyed, with melodies that fizzle and glow like streetlights. By the time they released their sophomore album, Hats, in the autumn of 1989, Buchanan was 33 years old, and his songs, once littered with bold declarations of love, now seemed to be composed entirely of ellipses and question marks. In 2019, the band's major label albums were re-issued on vinyl, with a re-issue of High charting at number 74 in the UK charts after being released by Confetti Records on 5 June 2020 as vinyl or double CD edition. [31] Legacy [ edit ] Although there has never been an official statement to clarify whether or not the Blue Nile still exists, the indications are that the band has split up. There appears to be disagreement among the band members themselves as to whether they will ever make another record together. Moore is emphatic that he will never rejoin the band, saying in communications sent in 2010 to the band's biographer that he was "finding it healthier to put all that behind me", [27] and in a 2013 interview his terse reply to the question of a reunion was, "I think stuff happened that was simply beyond the pale. It's a shame, but if the feeling for sitting down together really isn't there, then continuing to do so even because you want to is pointless." [19] On the other hand, Buchanan has not given up hope that the three members of the Blue Nile may make more music together in the future, [16] saying, "I don't know where things stand with the other two guys... In a way, I think it would be the right and proper thing to do but I'll just need to wait and see. If the others say let's do this... Certainly, if I bump into them on a corner my hope would be that we could say: so what are you doing tomorrow?" [14] He also lamented the estrangement with Moore, saying, "We're inhibited by the Scottish male thing where you have to give the other guy space, but I love PJ and there isn't a month goes by where I don't think about phoning him". [19] A remixed version of "Tinseltown in the Rain" was used as the theme music for the BBC Scotland drama series Tinsel Town.

Still a landmark, still high, still somehow intangible: The Blue Nile didn’t sound or function like any normal band. No one was more surprised than the band. “I’m just astounded that it’s taken off,” Buchanan told Melody Maker. It was Kid Jensen that was playing it,” Buchanan told Johnnie Walker, “and for some reason somebody said to us, ‘It’s No.126 in the charts’. I remember thinking, ‘That’s fantastic!’ And that was a Friday, I think. Anyway, on the Monday the company was bankrupt. It wasn’t the best start.” Nonetheless, Bell told Melody Maker, “That was the turning point. After that we decided to think about writing music in the long term.” A Walk Across the Rooftops is the debut album by Scottish band The Blue Nile, released on 30 April 1984 on Linn Records in the UK and on A&M Records in the US. Although the album was released to little fanfare and was not a big hit on its initial release, it slowly accumulated fans and sales through word of mouth as the years passed, and by the time the follow-up Hats was released in 1989, A Walk Across the Rooftops had sold 80,000 copies. [4] It continued to gather praise when reissued in 2012. As it turned out, when the time was right they wouldn’t need to look for a deal. RSO had donated cash to record more songs with Calum Malcolm, whose friendship with Ivor Tiefenbrun, founder of audio equipment company Linn Products, meant some of their gear had been installed at Castlesound.

It’s like a miracle that has been turned into a marketing factor. I’m absolutely dumbfounded by it. Every record should be compared to silence – silence is perfect, what are you going to put on it?” Melodies, mini-journeys, miracles and silence… These are the stuff of 1984’s A Walk Across The Rooftops, the debut album by The Blue Nile, whom Buchanan fronted over the course of four LPs. A work of delicate grace and understated yet transparent emotions, it’s hardly one of the 80s’ most attention-seeking records, yet – alongside its follow-up, 1989’s Hats – it remains one of that decade’s most cherished, casting a twilit shadow even now. NME placed A Walk Across the Rooftops at number 28 in its critics' list of albums of the year in 1984, while the single "Tinseltown in the Rain" placed at number 27 in the equivalent singles list. [32] We wanted to take it slowly and have a result worth listening to,” Bell nevertheless told Melody Maker, while Buchanan advised NME’s Richard Cook around the same time that, “Our way is just to persevere, working 16 hours The most commonly told story [ citation needed] [18] about the Blue Nile is that in 1983 they were approached by a local hi-fi manufacturer, Linn Products, and asked to produce a song that would showcase the Linn equipment to best effect. Linn was so pleased with the resulting record that it offered the Blue Nile a contract to make a whole album, and set up its own record label specifically to release it.

Carroll, Jim (26 August 2004). "And quiet flows the Nile". The Irish Times. Dublin, Ireland: The Irish Times Trust . Retrieved 4 April 2013. Kelly, Jennifer (30 January 2013). "At the Source of the Blue Nile: An Interview with Paul Buchanan". PopMatters . Retrieved 10 March 2013.

Release

Dolan, Karen J. (October 1985). "The Blue Nile: A Walk Across the Rooftops". Spin. Vol.1, no.6. p.31 . Retrieved 7 January 2022.