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Ludus \ Nue au Soleil (Complètement) [TWI 340 CD]

Crépuscule presents a remastered 2xCD edition of Nue au Soleil (Complètement), the definitive anthology by cult Manchester experimental group Ludus, featuring Linder Sterling and Ian Devine.

Recorded between 1978 and 1983, Nue au Soleil combines tracks from the albums Pickpocket, The Seduction and Danger Came Smiling along with stand-alone singles such as The Visit, Mother's Hour, Nue au Soleil and Breaking the Rules. Closing track I Don't Want To Go is a previously unreleased demo from 1978.

Disc 2 offers a John Peel session from August 1982 (these are the only studio recordings of all four songs), as well as a recording of the infamous 'meat dress' live show at The Haçienda on 5 November 1982.

Artwork by Benoît Hennebert. Photography by Christina Birrer and Roy Tee. 2xCD set packaged in 6 panel digipack with a 12 page booklet.

2xCD tracklist:

Disc 1:

1. How High Does the Sky Go?
2. My Cherry Is In Sherry
3. Let Me Go Where My Pictures Go
4. Howling Comique
5. Nue Au Soleil
6. She-She
7. What a Falling Off Was There
8. The Escape Artist
9. Breaking the Rules
10. The Fool
11. See the Keyhole
12. Mother's Hour
13. I Can't Swim I Have Nightmares
14. Hugo Blanco
15. Little Girls
16. I Don't Want To Go
17. Rosa Luxemburg
18. Recognition

Disc 2:

1. Vagina Gratitude (Peel)
2. Covenant (Peel)
3. Wrapped In Silence (Peel)
4. Too Hot To Handle (Peel)
5. Breaking the Rules (live)
6. Mirror Mirror (live)
7. Nue au Soleil (live)
8. Wrapped In Silence (live)
9. Let Me Go Where My Pictures Go (live)
10. Little Girls (live)
11. Too Hot to Handle (live)

Available on 2xCD + digital (MP3 and FLAC). To order please first select correct shipping option (UK, EU or Rest of World) and then click on Add To Cart button below the cover image. Digital copies are delivered to customers by email link.

Or, you can order with the option of tracked shipping from our friends at Burning Shed (click here to order)

Reviews:

"The collage mistress of the Buzzcocks' Orgasm Addict sleeve, the Wonderful Woman of Smiths legend and the designer of Factory Records' unmade menstrual egg timer, Linder starred in her own giddy sideshow from 1978 to 1984. Anthologised here, her output as Ludus fed punky Yoko Ono through a free-jazz mangle to fierce but playful effect. New Hormones singles My Cherry Is In Sherry and Mother's Hour take Essential Logic to their logical conclusion, while the Rainy City high life of The Escape Artist and gender-blur Breaking the Rules document a pleasing later stab at funky loft-conversion sophistication. The second disc digs up a Soft Machine-ish 1982 Peel session, while a live show documents the night Linder treated the Haçienda's cool-cats to her approximation of Bucks Fizz's whipping-off-the-skirt trick, slipping aside her much-imitated raw meat dress to reveal a black dildo... A small but thrilling adventure. 8/10" (Uncut, 02/2017)

"Career anthology of extraordinary Manchester postpunk band Ludus, including four tracks from a rare Peel Session and a 1982 live set at the Hacienda, put together with a great deal of care and attention and providing a deep overview of the Ludus journey. I can't pretend that Ludus or this collection will appeal to absolutely everyone - you will need to have at least a little adventurousness in your listening habits and an open mind - but if you persevere I can promise a stunning collection of one of punk's best but least rewarded talents, and there are enough catchy numbers and odd pop tunes to keep the less committed interested too" (Louder Than War, 01/2017)

"Linder's 2013 show at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris tells an earlier tale. Of how, in 1976, graphic design student Linda Mulvey became Linder and, informed as much by feminism as by Dada and Surrealist manifestos, embarked on an incisive, arresting, often hilarious study of the relationship between consumertism, sex and gender" (The Wire, 04/2013)

"As you'll cop across these 29 songs, Ludus excelled in making a loose yet compact form of avant-pop equally open to punk's melodic spikiness and the freeform clatter of improvisation, and wherever the feeling takes them - for example, from the mesh of rolling tribal drums and Linder's soaring operatics in How High Does The Sky Go? or frolicking no-wave jazz skronk in Howling Comique, through to svelte, lilting palm wine guitar and Antena-like bossa pop in The Escape Artist, to pieces which recall a prototypical Mr Bungle in Mother's Hour, or e subversive disco-pop on Little Girls - perhaps most definitely in the Peel Session recording of Vagina Gratitude - with Linder's always pointed lyrics exhorted and puckered in styles ranging from yelps and shrieks to piercing extended technique and animalistic or orgiastic glossolalia. It's maybe baffling that Linder isn't better known by the generation who followed her, but this anthology will serve a necessary introduction (where needed) to this pioneering, challenging and important artist and her band. Highly recommended!" (Boomkat, 01/2017)

"You can hear traces, in Linder Sterling's voice, of the off-kilter yodel that her pal Morrissey would later make his own, and at times, Ian Devine's intricate guitar motifs simplify into the sort of serrated, rhythmic riffs that became Johnny Marr's trademark. Nue au Soleil is an extraordinary collection. Let Me Go Where My Pictures Go is skittering hi-life pop with shades of Orange Juice or Haircut 100's joyous/melancholy beat surrender; She-She is halfway between Animal Nightlife and Weekend's jazz-pop and Rip Rig & Panic's darting time signatures and freeform wildness. My Cherry Is In Sherry could be Brigitte Bardot cooing over Captain Beafheart's Trout Mask Replica, while See the Keyhole suggests Stereolab's neo-Gallic subterfuge 12 years too soon. And that's without mentioning Vagina Gratitude. Talk about breaking the rules. 4/5" (Classic Pop, 2/2017)

"Approaching music with a similar cut-and-paste ethic to Linder Sterling's visual work, Ludis spliced jazz, funk and poetry, all with a pronounced femme-punk slant, placing them in a congruent seam to The Slits" (Louder Than War, 02/2017)