ABOUT USLouder Than War is a music, culture and media publication headed by The Membranes & Goldblade frontman John Robb. Online since 2010 it is one of the fastest-growing and most respected music-related publications on the net. I am not avant-garde I am a deserter': Blixa Bargeld, Einsturzende Neubauten and the reinvention of Berlin

john robb - the art of darkness: a history of goth - resident john robb - the art of darkness: a history of goth - resident

READ MORE: The Cure photographer Paul Cox: “Robert Smith is a normal bloke – but he has a presence” The roots of The Cure’s Gothic résumé come in the shape of three albums: Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography,” Tolhurst writes. “The Cure needed a way out of the situation that we found ourselves in, but first we had to undergo a quest to fully understand who we were and where we came from.” Ok, I love this book; it covers a period of music I lived through and still listen to this very day. The style is very detailed and lyrical, covering the bands and the times. If you have any interest in the history of this music, this is the book to get. I didn’t see myself as a Goth fan as a teenager – to the extent that I would deny that The Cure were Goth – mainly because how could a band I really liked be lumped in with the likes of Fields of the Nephilim or Balaam and the Angel? To give credit to my younger self, The Cure don’t really see themselves as Goth either and nor do 90% of the bands Robb writes about – even Siouxsie and the Banshees, for heaven’s sake. But seriously, one of the book’s strengths is its loose definition of Goth as a broad church.Adam Ant may seem a surprising inclusion to some, but the influence of early Adam and the Ants spread out to the likes of Southern Death Cult and the tribal rhythms of what was initially dubbed the Positive Punk scene and the Ants followers were to become equally influential, with their fanzines, their fashions and their fanatical devotion to following the band around on tour, as detailed in Johna Johnson’s books. He even thinks Noel Gallagher’s latest is “a bit gothy”. “It’s the Robert Smith remix of course, it’s great,” Robb said. “It just shows that when you look closely, goth is still everywhere. I think it always will be.” A real labour of love (a decade in the making) Robb’s book takes as its jumping-off point the architecture, literature and philosophy that was deemed “Gothic”. There is an academic approach here, but never is it inaccessible. There is also, as Robb asserts, a socio-economic aspect to the goth scene, emerging as it did at the tail end of punk. Goth can be regarded as the more glamorous cousin to punk, but to dismiss it as decadent or frivolous is to miss the point. Of course, a crushed velvet, vintage aesthetic is one element, but goths always had something to say. Witness Jaz Coleman from Killing Joke, and his apocalyptic visions, many of which proved prescient. Or Siouxsie Sioux and Robert Smith writing about mental health issues, racism and alienation, when such issues still remained taboo in the 70s and 80s. youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy9h2q_dr9k&w=560&h=315]Bela Lugosi’s Dead (Official Version) – YouTube All the children are insane, or people are strange: the (un)holy trinity: The Doors/Velvets/Stooges

The art of darkness: The history of goth by John Robb The art of darkness: The history of goth by John Robb

While this does take a while to get through it is worth it to set the scene before we get to the bulk of the book which, of course, focuses on the musical trend that began in the late 1970s through to the mid-1990s (he does go beyond this as ‘goth’ didn’t suddenly vanish in 1995, but this period is the main focus). Robb delved into old interviews he carried out with Cave for the book. In them, he said Cave was reluctant to label himself a goth: “Cave would never consider himself a goth despite his brooding music, his dark poetry, his wild performances and his darkly exotic image that made him one of the icons of the form.” It’s a thought-provoking question that the author leaves open-ended. But like Schrödinger’s experimental cat, it is clear that Goth is currently both dead and very much alive. Tolhurst’s engaging historical memoir is the third of three books this year to examine Goth music and culture, following on from John Robb’s Art of Darkness: The History of Goth and Cathi Unsworth’s Season of the Witch: The Book of Goth (published in May). I'm told there are sporadic factual errors: studio names, recording times, and so forth. Aside from a glaring reference to Alan Moore as a "famous comic book ARTIST," most those errors slid past me. In any case, the majority of this section draws from personal accounts, and so those errors may simply come from disparities between memory and records. Division, Bauhaus & The Fall. They released a remarkable series of records throughout the ‘80s that combined their small town frustration with a love of heavy bass and distortion.Robb also discovered that in the same month the review was published, Iggy Pop was also watching Morrison while still a student at university. “Iggy was heavily influenced by Morrison,” Robb says. “You could see that darkness running through his work from the beginning.”