Eighties Topalbums: Twelfth Night - Fact And Fiction

tracklist:

We Are Sane

Human Being

This City

World Without End

Fact And Fiction

The Poet Sniffs A Flower

Creepshow

Love Song

It was quiet for a while, but I picked up the thread with an album that I had been confronted with in a pleasant way. The C: Live Collective released the debut album The Age Of Insanity in early March. Behind this "collective" is multi-instrumentalist Clive Mitten, who was part of the progressive rock band Twelfth Night in the eighties. In 2016, Mitten, who had not composed any new music for more than 30 years, was triggered to come into action when an intense personal event got a huge political charge. Mitten's wife was vilified on the front page of one of the UK's most notorious tabloids.

As Mitten said, he learned that day in the mainstream media, being tried by a tabloid is more important than whether there is a glimmer of truth in the headlines on the front page of the tabloid (this was not the case). He also learned that social media is a dark place, driven by hatred, intolerance and hatred of women.

At the same time, popular totalitarianism woke up in the west when a former host of a game show (The Apprentice) managed to make it the president of the USA. As Mitten notes, Nazis were back in the streets of Britain, MP Jo Cox was killed in broad daylight near a library in Birstall, where the perpetrator had ties with the Front National and the English Defense League.

Then there was the notorious red bus that sold a lie to the public, to vote accordingly in the UK referendum on whether the United Kingdom should leave the EU. The rest, as they say, is history.

"Suddenly the world that Geoff and I had anticipated in Fact And Fiction felt very real," Mitten said.

How to make the link with Fact And Fiction. This turns out to be childishly simple. Both The Age Of Insanity and Fact And Fiction open with the very strong We Are Sane and The City Is London is the closing act of The Age Of Insanity, while this song is featured as This City on Fact And Fiction.

Twelfth Night is one of the most influential and respected British neo-prog bands. Although the career of the band is characterized by different changes in the dramatis personae, many Fact And Fiction, released in 1982, see as their best album. The album is a commentary on the double speech and thought control that begins to penetrate into society, and appears two years before the settlement year, as predicted in George Orwell's 1984. Twelfth Night, however, musically lingers on two thoughts at that moment.

1982 is a strange year in terms of the musical landscape. Punk gradually disappears into the background and the new wave and especially the new romantic is on the rise. Twelfth Night has never been averse to handling these music streams, as the shorter songs on predecessor Smiling At Grief already show. This strategy of shorter numbers is pushed to such an extent during the sessions for Fact And Fiction that the group seriously considers changing the name to Red. Honesty area to say that the band members are not all listening to progressive rock. The favorites for Andy Revell at that time are Dare from The Human League, Sons Of Fascination and New Gold Dream from Simple Minds and October from U2 while other members also count bands like Ultravox as their favorite.

This translates into music. The group wants to experiment with a unique style, in which the musical sensitivity and pallet of progressive rock is cast in a more modern and concise format with hard, socio-political elements in the texts. The title track of the album, for example, starts as Constant (Fact And Fiction), after which it is quickly agreed that it will not appear on the album, although the title is to be used. At the same time, Geoff Mann writes the text for the number Leader, which he renames to Fact And Fiction. Two more short songs Fistful Of Bubbles and Dancing In The Dream will be recorded, but will only appear on the Cyclops reissue of 2002.

In the end, everything changed when Marillion signed a contract with EMI in September 1982. One immediately understands that this is a clear signal that the route to become a successful group does not necessarily have to come from a first hit. Strengthened by this fact, it is decided to shift the emphasis: the most commercial numbers must give way; among others Eleanor Rigby and East Of Eden, fall prey to this. Human Being, originally an up-tempo number of less than four minutes, is being converted to the familiar version of almost eight minutes full of prog features of flowing keyboards, bass, solos and sound effects.

Nice detail: Most of the songs are written on the Korg PolySyx synthesizer, recently purchased by Clive Mitten. This programmable polyphonic synthesizer is released by Korg in 1981 and is one of the first affordable programmable synths.

Fact And Fiction is the latest album by Twelfth Night that will be released this summer as The Definitive Edition in a triple CD version. In addition to the entire album, a disc full of demos & outtakes and a disc full of different versions of certain songs with other singers and cover versions are added.