Tag Archives: Shelter

Press Release: The Peace Race – Shelter (Mortality Tables)

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released today: the debut album from The Peace Race, a duo of producers / songwriters Pascal Gabriel and Jim Eliot

limited CD and unlimited digital editions now available at mortalitytables.bandcamp.com

THE PEACE RACE ‘SHELTER’

Shelter is the debut album from The Peace Race.

The Peace Race is a duo of Pascal Gabriel and Jim Eliot, two producers and songwriters who met in 2008 while they were both working separately on songs for the first Ladyhawke album.

The origins of the 11 tracks included on Shelter began in 2020. With no idea how it might land, Jim decided to reach out to Pascal and suggested something he’d named ‘Synth-Pop Mondays’: at the start of each week, the pair would connect for three hours and come up with the seed of an idea, just through mucking around with their respective synth collections. They’d then go away and work on the idea independently, before coming back together again at the start of the next week to share what they’d each come up with.

Shelter is an album that was never supposed to be an album. Neither Pascal nor Jim saw it as anything more than just a fun way of working together with no agenda, no deadline, no labels, no pop singers and no expectations. It was only when Pascal sent Jim his version of the effervescent dance track ‘As It Happens’, the first track they worked on, that the duo realised they should probably commit to seeing where else the process might lead them.

The album’s euphoric first single, ‘Something From Nothing’, followed, with Jim’s vocals summing up the creative collaboration they’d embarked on through the series of Monday synth-pop jam sessions: of powerful and emotive ideas emerging from the blank sheet of paper that each Monday morning offered. That collaborative process would take them from the jerky, shouty post-punk of ‘Disconnected’, through the relentless motorik pulse of ‘Sternengucker’ and onward toward the haunting emotional journey of ‘Wonderful’

“Been here, but it feels so new,” sings Jim on ‘Love Affair’. It is a sentiment that dominates this album. Both Pascal and Jim are seasoned collaborators. Together they have worked with some of the pop world’s biggest stars, and produced some exceptionally memorable hits. Your playlists are more than likely filled with songs they’ve written and produced. Yet The Peace Race offered them something like a release, a different type of creative energy, and an opportunity to dig into their respective influences freely.

“I really like having someone to muck around with,” says Jim. “Both Pascal and I are used to working completely on our own, but working together as The Peace Race means I have someone to bounce things off. When you’re working with another person, it feels you can have a commentary and a dialogue about what it is that you’re making. It’s no longer just your brain, and I think that’s really important in a creative process.”

What began with Jim’s idea for a casual Monday musical hang-out has become, in the words that gave the album its title, their shelter. It is a place they can occupy where they can be themselves, making music for no one but each other. That approach has produced an album that brings together their ability to craft attention-grabbing, hook-filled pop tracks while also allowing them the time, space and freedom to apply layers of intricate sounds and textures.

“There’s a lot of detail in these songs, and we always add a lot of stuff that’s there in the background if you listen really closely,” says Pascal. “I love to do that when I work on music. Jim works that way too, which is why these songs sound like they do and why we were able to work together so easily on Shelter. For both of us, the detailing is every bit as important as the things that hit you straight away.”

Shelter is released today on limited CD and unlimited digital editions, exclusively from mortalitytables.bandcamp.com



Tracklist:
1. Wonderful
2. Something From Nothing
3. Infinite Fields
4. Love Affair
5. Blackest Blue
6. Disconnexted
7. I Won’t Let You Down
8. Sternengucker
9. As It Happens
10. Sleep Tight
11. Rise

The Peace Race are Pascal Gabriel and Jim Eliot

Recorded at Scabby Road (UK) and Bohemia Sound (FR)
Written and produced by The Peace Race
Published by Kobalt Music / Copyright Control
Mastered by Audio Animals
Design by Neil Coe

A Mortality Tables Product
MTP67

digital and limited CD editions available now through mortalitytables.bandcamp.com

The Peace Race – Jim Eliot (L) & Pascal Gabriel (R). Photograph by Pippa Ungar.

PASCAL GABRIEL

Maverick songwriter and producer Pascal Gabriel’s career has spanned 30 years so far. His credits include S-Express’s number one hit ‘Theme from S-Express’, Bomb The Bass’s landmark album ‘Beat Dis’, EMF’s multi-platinum ‘Schubert Dip’, as well as Dido’s ‘Here With Me’ and ‘No Angel’. Later hits include tracks with Kylie, Ladyhawke, Will Young, Goldfrapp, Marina And The Diamonds, Miss Kittin, Little Boots, Emma Louise and The Temper Trap. With his solo project Stubbleman, Pascal has released two albums on Crammed Discs / PIAS to critical acclaim.JIM ELIOT

Jim Eliot is an English songwriter and producer who has had eight UK top 10 singles alongside much international success.

Hailing from an indie / electronic background with his band Kish Mauve, he is able to successfully straddle indie, pop and electronic music, while maintaining pop sensibilities with credible production and presentation.

Jim’s key releases include ‘Anything Could Happen’ by Ellie Goulding which, to date, has sold over one million copies in the US, ‘Pound Cake’ by Drake ft. Jay Z, ‘Glitterball’ by Sigma ft. Ella Henderson, ‘Dear Darlin’ & UK number one single ‘Heart Skips A Beat’ by Olly Murs, ‘All The Lovers’ and ‘Two Hearts’ by Kylie Minogue. Jim also contributed to Tom Grennan’s number one album ‘Evering Road’, co-writing ‘It Hurts’.

Recent collaborations include multiple cuts with Irish folk band Kingfishr from the number one album Halcyon. Jim is currently writing with Paloma Faith, Tom Rasmussen, Take That, Ice Dob, myohmy and James Arthur.

(c) 2026 Mortality Tables & The Peace Race

Mortality Tables is a collaborative project established by Documentary Evidence founder Mat Smith in 2019.

Andy Bell – Judgement (from Variance III – The ‘Torsten In Queereteria’ Remixes)

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andybell_varianceiii

Erasure’s Andy Bell releases Variance III – The ‘Torsten In Queereteria’ Remixes as a limited edition CD through Strike Force Entertainment / Cherry Red on December 6th.

The counterpart to the music from this year’s sensational third part in Barney Ashton-Bullock and Christopher Frost’s visceral musical about the semi-immortal polysexual Torsten, Variance III includes brilliant, shimmering remixes of tracks from Torsten In Queereteria by Bronski Beat and Matt Pop. Tangerine Dream’s Jerome Froese delivers a thunderous, dark-edged version of ‘Lowland Lowriders’, one of the most poignant moments from the show and Andy Bell’s accompanying soundtrack album, while Shelter reprise their work with Andy Bell on their joint iPop album from 2014 with a stunning mix of the ordinarily wistful ‘We Hadn’t Slept For Twenty Years’.

The collection also includes a solo version of the standout nod to Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, ‘If We Want To Drink A Little’, originally recorded for the Torsten In Queereteria album by Bell and Hazel O’Connor, various single edits and radio-friendly versions of tracks from the original album.

Variance III also includes two new, unreleased tracks from the third instalment of the Torsten series, ‘Judgement’ and the lurid lounge jazz-funk of ‘Lead Me’. Documentary Evidence is today delighted to share the exclusive first play of the anguished, beautiful ‘Judgement’. The song is accompanied by previously unseen stills from the photo shoots for Torsten In Queereteria, finding Bell effortlessly evoking the essential inner turmoil of a character that he has made his own since he first took it on for a limited run at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014.

Watch the extract of ‘Judgement’ below. Order Variance III from Cherry Red.

Related: Andy Bell – Torsten In Queereteria : Redux (interview)

Sincere thanks to Barney Ashton-Bullock.

(c) 2019 Documentary Evidence

Electronic Sound Issue 47

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Electronic Sound issue 47 is now available, featuring a very special in-depth look at Wendy Carlos’s work for Stanley Kubrick’s still-disturbing film of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. This month’s musical accompaniment is a CD featuring exclusive ‘responses’ to Carlos’s soundtrack from a whole bunch of electronic music luminaries, including Chris Carter (who worked on the movie as sound assistant), Factory Floor‘s Gabe Gurnsey, Sink Ya Teeth and Jack Dangers. There’s also a nice chat with Barry Adamson, who Sink Ya Teeth recently supported for his October shows in Manchester and London.

This month I contributed an Introducing piece on violinist Jessica Moss, whose new electronically-augmented work Entanglement is both modishly minimalist and refreshingly maximalist. I also reviewed new albums by SAD MAN, whose ROM-COM is his eleventh release in the past year full of eclectic gestures; Demolition by Brooklynite Robert Toher under his Public Memory alias which has all the murkiness of classic Depeche Mode filtered through trip-hop nous; Defiance + Entropy by FORM, a collaboration between Rob Dust, Shelter‘s Mark Bebb and Depeche tribute act Speak & Spell‘s Keith Trigwell; and Where Moth And Rust Consume by Sone Institute on the consistently excellent Front & Follow.

My favourite album this month was the wonderful sax and synths of Frank Paul Schubert and Isambard Khroustaliov with their hypothetical muzak for “the restaurant at the end of the universe”, a hastily-recorded improvised record full of noise and compelling coarseness. Listen to the stellar ‘Maconte, The Cross-Eyed Agony Aunt’ from That Would Have Been Decent at Bandcamp below.

(c) 2018 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for Electronic Sound

Shelter – Soar (Ministry Of Pop album, 2018)

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Shelter, the duo of Mark Bebb and Rob Bradley, have consistently proven themselves capable of producing understated, appealing electronic pop music. Whether on the upward-pointing arcs of their 2016 album Ascend or their celebrated collaboration with Erasure’s Andy Bell on iPop, Bebb and Bradley have a tight handle on how to make music that grabs you, lifts you up, occasionally gives you a firm, emotional shake and generally leaves you feeling just a bit more optimistic than you were before you started listening to it.

Third album Soar builds where Ascend left off with a collection of ten songs variously trading in thudding euphoria, fragile balladry and glossy synth pop. What works so well about the music these electronomads create is the humanising quality that vocalist Bebb brings to Bradley’s electronic templates. A track like ‘Touch’ ripples forth on a rich bed of synths, dark-hued rhythms and mesmerising melodies, but it is Bebb’s singular vocal that wreaks havoc with your emotions, adding a tenderness and delicate edge amid the alien, robotic sounds his voice weaves around.

One of the standout tracks here is ‘Karma’, which opens with a stern, angular bassline reminiscent of Fad Gadget’s ‘Back To Nature’ that is promptly overwhelmed by regimented rhythms and layers of icicle-sharp synth tones. Bebb here is the dramatic, finger-pointing sage, explaining pointedly to the listener that no action is without consequence, a note of empathy the only relief from an otherwise sinister delivery. Opener ‘Electronica’ is a bold, techno-infused paean to the electronic music of the last forty years, the line ‘Microchips and wires made us who we are,’ being just about the most pointed description of why so many of us remain fascinated by this enduring, constantly-evolving music.

It’s the album’s title track and ‘1984’ that steal the show here, though, both being brittle, heartfelt songs wrapped tightly in classic electronic pop blankets, all perfect melodies and propulsive rhythms. On these tracks the Shelter sound is reminiscent of Bright Light Bright Light, carrying the same dizzying ability to spin your emotions around full circle and leaving you uncertain whether you should be upbeat or miserable. (Anyone who’s spent any time with my reviews will recognise that as a songwriting quality that I fall in love with much more than is good for me.)

Soar is currently being crowdfunded and will be released as a two disc album complete with 12” mixes of each track. Head to Crowdfunder to show your support, where you’ll find a range of pledge options, including a special edition of iPop.

(c) 2018 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Shelter – Ascend (Ministry Of Pop album, 2016)

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Shelter are a familiar name to anyone with a passing interest in the solo work of Erasure’s Andy Bell given his collaboration with the duo on 2014’s iPop album, another in a series of extra-curricular projects from the Erasure frontman that have started to emerge in the past few years.

The team of Mark Bebb and Rob Bradley describe Ascend as a more mature offering, and while that might be true in the sense of its slightly more emotional, slowed-up moments, the album is also 100% true to the Shelter sound – namely slick, polished, generally upbeat electronic pop songs that lean heavily toward modern hi-NRG club-friendly structures (see the vaguely ‘Jump’-referencing ‘This Must Be Love’) – but also finds the collaborations that have coloured their previous releases consciously absent.

Judging by the lyrics and phrasing on tracks like the opener ‘Breathless’ or ‘Do You Remember’, Shelter’s time in the company of Andy Bell has evidently rubbed off on them. Mark Bebb’s vocal on these songs has the same thwarted, disappointed, defenceless quality – they’re love songs, for sure, but they seem to be delivered from a unrequited vantage point. Bell has made a career out of that bruised, fragile quality, amplified by Vince Clarke’s sympathetic synth melodies, and what you have here is a decent emulation of that latter-day Erasure style. It’s a formula that Shelter revisit throughout the album, but without ever making them sound like one trick ponies or like they’re just trying to rip off their mates.

Elsewhere, there are moments of rapturous surrender, pitched perfectly for the secret corners of nightclubs; tracks like ‘In The Dark’ might have the rhythm and pace demanded by clubland, but the tone is sullen, dangerous, edgy. Some of the best moments on Ascend happen when Shelter slow things right down and eschew the politics of the dancing for the type of pop music that seemed to wither and die about thirty years ago. ‘Figaro’, for example, is all Latin-inflected rhythms and sun-baked summery heartbreak. The track has that whole ‘La Isla Bonita’ mystery thing down to a fine art, with the juxtaposition of jangly guitars and melodramatic, shimmering melodies more than enough to get a jaded pop music fan like me properly wistful.

It may be a simple product of my general disdain for a pop music landscape which feels duty-bound to use collaborations as the only way to keep things vaguely interesting, but the most compelling moments on Ascend are undoubtedly those that find Shelter operating as a self-contained unit. When they lock the doors to the studio and leave the collaborators outside, Ascend is a smart, well-crafted, confident electronic pop album with plenty of fine songs that suggests a duo finding their own voice.

(c) 2016 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence