Watching You Tonight (partially found Absolute album; 1986-1987)

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This article has been tagged as Needing work due to its slightly poor wording lack of references.



Absolute1.jpeg

Absolute in a photoshoot made for the album in 1986.

Status: Partially Found

Absolute was a synth-pop/electronic music band formed between 1982 and 1983 by John Thomas, Colin Taaffe (Taf) and Paul Johnson, being known for being signees of the infamous "Reset Records" label owned by Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure) and his partner in crime and producer Eric Radcliffe, from late 1984 to 1987, releasing two singles "T.V. Glare" in 1985 and "Can't You See" in 1987.

Early Days

Absolute was formed in Brighton between late-1982 and mid-1983 when all the members were still in high school. At first, the band consisted of Depeche Mode’s covers that utilized Paul’s synthesizer and John’s Technics organ. Taf and Paul left school in 1984 and got jobs while John stayed in school. By this time, John had purchased a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer and a Korg KPR-77 drum machine and Paul had a Korg Poly-61 and a Korg Micro-Preset. The two began to practice song writing and using their instruments until they felt confident enough to record a demo. They went into a local studio and recorded their first track titled “Face Up".

T.V. Glare

One of the members got in contact with Eric Radcliffe in mid-1984 to record some demos at Splendid Studios. Radcliffe was interested by their sound and Taf’s vocal resemblance to Dave Gahan, leading them be signed on the infamous Reset Records label in late 1984.

Reset Records at that point had an amount of unsuccessful releases with Robert Marlow, releasing three singles and an album that was shelved at that time. They had lost their contract with RCA Records and was held by Sonet Publishing and Vogue Distribution in France.

In November 1984, the band recorded two more demos with John Fryer at the controls. Absolute met Vince, who was one of their heroes. Vince suggested that "T.V. Glare" would make a good single and that they should meet after Christmas to do the pre-programming at his house in London. The production started later on mid 1985 with the track "The Merry Go-Round", which was featured in the "Electronic Soundmaker" magazine on June 1985.

T.V. Glare was recorded in a week at Splendid Studios and released in August 1985. Unfortunately, it was not the hit that Vince or Eric had expected and in spite of extensive radio play, T.V. coverage, and even a bit of national press, the single was only played on BBC Radio 1-3 times a day when it was released under Sonet Publishing and Neil Ferris paid to plug it.

One of the surviving pictures of the shot made for the album.

Can't You See

By late 1985, Vince Clarke left Reset Records, leaving Eric Radcliffe in charge of the label, but before that he told that the song "Can't You See" was going to be Absolute's next single after listening to a demo. and on May 1986 Eric Radcliffe started the recording of the single along with their album, everything produced by John Fryer, however John Thomas left in early 1986, but he was going to be featured on the album's credits and photoshoots made for it.

By that time relations were very strained with Vince and Eric, especially as Vince had confided to the band during a lift to Kings Cross that Erasure had not been an instant success and he was worried.

Nobody was happy with the finished version of "Can’t You See" which sounded like it had come off Erasure’s Wonderland LP.

John Fryer was given the job of re-recording "Can’t You See" along with completing Absolute’s album during winter 1986, featuring backing vocals of Karen Dobie, an amateur singer at the time.

"Can't You See" was released on April 1987 only as a 7-inch single, it was a total flop with no promotion from Sonet or Reset and withdrawn from many stores weeks later. This caused confusion on late-1990s if it was released or not, but on 1998 was confirmed that the single was relased but had no promotion thanks to a CD-R bootleg release of a Reser Records compilation.


The Lost 12-Inch

Weeks after the release of the 7-inch version of "Can't You See" John Fryer started to work on a 12-inch release along with the band, it was mixed in 3 week, it consisted of a 12 minute mix of "Can't You See" and the full version of "Love In My Heart" which was a 4 and a half minute piano ballad with Taf on the vocals. However, with the null promotion of the 7-inch release, there was no point of releasing the 12-inch, it was considered a waste of time and money, so no vinyl manufacturing and no release was materialized.

Watching You Tonight: The Lost Album

After the release of "T.V. Glare", Clare and Radcliffe had talks about Absolute recording and releasing their own album, which was quite risky at the time, the label was at their worst days, and the attempt of releasing an album was frustrated time ago due to the poor reception of Robert Marlow's releases.

However, Vince had sympathy for the band, he also liked the novelty factor that Absolute played a lot of parts manually which took him back to the old days with Depeche Mode and gave Absolute a chance to record an album.

On October 1985 the works of promotion for the album started, but the production was delayed when Clarke made officially that he was leaving the label to form Erasure, and Eric Radcliffe was put in charge by Sonet to run the label, but also be Absolute's "manager" since they were 16-year old boys.

Production

Finally on May 3rd, 1986 the band along with John Fryer which was chosen to be the producer, started the recording sessions at Blackwing Studios.

At this time, the band switched to a more experimental style, thanks to the influence of John Fryer, who was working with bands like Nitzer Ebb and 4AD.

The tracks "T.V. Glare" and "The Merry Go-Round" were reworked, giving them a different and industrial sound from the early releases made with Vince. A photoshoot was made on June 18th, 1986 on some buildings nearby Splendid/Blacking Studios, days before John Thomas was leaving the band.

One of the surviving pictures of the shot made for the album.

The production was finished on mid-1987, recording 11 tracks, including a few mixes.

Tracklist

  1. Take Her Away
  2. Can't You See
  3. Does Anybody Want Me?
  4. T.V. Glare
  5. Club Boys (Also known as "Clubbed Boys"
  6. Friend Or Enemy
  7. Love In My Heart
  8. Only Time Can Tell
  9. Doofah On 45
  10. Now You Are Gone
  11. The Merry Go-Round


Karen Dobie was recruited to do the backing vocals for most of the tracks except "Club Boys", "Love In My Heart", "Now You Are Gone", "Doofah On 45" and "The Merry Go-Round".

The word "Doofah" was a thing between them. It was an ongoing joke at the time of recording where John and the band would refer to pieces of studio equipment as a "Doofah" because they couldn’t remember the proper name. They would say to John Fryer “running through the doofah over there!" All three of them were sampled saying "Doofah!" on the tracks "Doofah On 45" and "The Merry Go Round".


Availability

Absolute got lost in time and there was no information about the band for quite a long time, the band was mentioned in several times, but the story about them remained unknown, However on 2017, Paul Johnson the former member of Absolute, posted on Soundcloud most of the album and the work done with EMI on late 1987. He told that he got a copy of the master on a cassette tape in late 1990s, however the transfer/cop.

The masters and the master tape are in possession of Eric Radcliffe.