A Walk Across The Rooftops

By racket racket

Classic Album Sundays Glasgow presents The Blue Nile’s debut A Walk Across The Rooftops this Sunday at the Berkeley Suite.

The Blue Nile - A Walk Across The Rooftops LP Sleeve

Easily one of our favourite debuts and one of the best Scottish LPs of all time, the first release on Linn Records, A Walk Across The Rooftops, should make for a special event for the second of Glasgow’s Classic Album Sundays. High demand for tickets has meant that a second listening session has been added – for which four tickets remain. So act quick if you want to go.

Both listenings at Glasgow’s Berkeley Suite will be preceded by a selection of tracks from the era it was released and music that influenced the band, as well as an introduction to the record from the author of Nileism – The Strange Course of The Blue Nile, Allan Brown.

Here’s a bit more info from the organisers:

To coincide with The Blue Nile’s seminal debut album being re-issued in November, we thought it was the perfect time to play this classic album from Glasgow.

Both A Walk Across The Roof Tops and its follow up Hats have been remastered as a double CD, featuring unreleased versions and b-sides selected by the band.

Formed in 1981, the three piece Blue Nile had released one single on their own, Peppermint Records, before they were introduced to hi-fi manufacturer, Linn Products, by their friend, and soon to be long term producer and engineer, Calum Malcolm.

Interest in the band has continued to increase over the years with their ethereal, spacious sound, prolonged periods of inaction and lack of ‘profile’ from the band all adding to the mystique.

Linn were looking for a band to record a track that would showcase “the fidelity and versatility” of their high-end hi-fi components, like the Sondek LP12 turntable. Having heard a demo of Tinseltown In The Rain while visiting Castlesound Studios, they approached the band to fund the recording of a full album, and formed a record label especially to release it.

The rest of the album followed the laidback style of the opening A Walk Across The Rooftops, though the pace is picked up with the homage to Glasgow in the anthemic single, Tinseltown in The Rain. It garnered positive reviews, but only sold modestly at the time. Interest in the band has continued to increase over the years with their ethereal, spacious sound, prolonged periods of inaction and lack of ‘profile’ from the band all adding to the mystique.

We’ll be able to listen to A Walk Across The Rooftops as it was supposed to be heard: on a fabulous hi-fi system, showing off the fantastic production, but most of all, taking you closer to the performance and the heartfelt emotion of the songs.

We’ll be using Linn’s iconic Sondek LP12 turntable with a reference Klimax Kontrol pre-amplifier and Linn’s very own ‘black ops’ custom made fully active PA system featuring 12 channels of their Akurate power amplifiers.

We love the video above (brought to our attention by Colin Scott) and featuring Headlights on the Parade from the band’s second LP, Hats. Have a watch and a listen to get yourself in a Nile-ist frame of mind.

For full details and to buy the few remaining tickets visit the Event Brite page. And for more of this sort of thing keep an eye on the Classic Album Sundays website.

Andrew Pirie, who runs the Classic Album Sundays events in Glasgow and is also part of the Melting Pot club night team featured in the first issue of the So & So fanzine. You can buy a copy of that on the So & So website. Issue 2 of that will be out in 2013.

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