Parade Ground mark 45 years with ‘Strange World’ 3″ CD-R and digital edition
Parade Ground mark 45 years with 'Strange World' 3" CD-R and digital edition
Belgian cold wave / EBM duo Parade Ground celebrate their 45th anniversary with a new four-track release, “Strange World”, issued digitally and as an extremely limited 3″ CD-R via their official Bandcamp page. The single revisits one of the band’s central tracks in four different versions spanning the period from an early 1986 demo to a new remix edit. This new “Strange World” single is the opening part of a planned anniversary series.
The release runs just over sixteen minutes and contains the following versions:
The single opens with a radio edit of People Theatre’s “Crash Mix”, with the extended version announced for a forthcoming remix collection. The second track is the 2011 rework of “Strange World” by Patrick Codenys of Front 242, while the third track restores the original 1987/1988 12″ mix that later featured on the compilation “Parade Ground (The Single Collection)”.
The closing demo version traces the song back to its origin as a 1986 home-studio recording, previously issued on the early-material anthology “Heaven With Care”, which VUZ Records released as a prelude to the band’s 45th anniversary activities in 2025. All four tracks on the 2026 single are newly remastered by Per-Anders Kurenbach (House Of Wax NRW).
“Strange World” originally appeared as a standalone 12″ on Play It Again Sam in 1988 and on the debut album “Cut Up”, where it was presented alongside “Hollywood” and other late-80s singles. Later live and studio releases such as “Life” and “The Golden Years” kept the track in circulation.
About Parade Ground
Parade Ground is a Brussels-based electronic duo formed in 1981 by brothers Jean-Marc Pauly and Pierre Pauly, regarded as pioneers of Belgian cold wave and Electronic Body Music. The pair initially developed a stark, guitar-tinged cold wave sound before moving towards more rhythmic, synth-driven material during the second half of the 1980s.
Their early discography began with the single “Moan on the Sly” in 1983 and continued with 12″ releases such as “Man in a Trance”, “Took Advantage”, “Dual Perspective” and the 1988 singles “Hollywood” and “Strange World”, many of them produced in collaboration with Daniel B. and Patrick Codenys from Front 242 and Colin Newman of Wire. This period culminated in the 1988 album “Cut Up”, released on Play It Again Sam and later reissued several times on CD and digital platforms.
After a long studio hiatus between 1988 and 2007, during which the Pauly brothers pursued other artistic projects, Parade Ground returned with the album “Rosary” in 2007 and its companion release “Sanctuary”, both showing a denser and more atmospheric extension of their “emotional body music” approach. In the following years they issued live and archival works including “Live Collection”, the live album “Life (Live in Frankfurt)” on VUZ Records, the late-1980s studio set “A Room With A View” and the album “The 15th Floor”, which bundled material originally recorded around 1989.
From the late 2010s onwards, Parade Ground’s catalogue has been systematically revisited through collaborations with VUZ Records and other labels. This includes the best-of collection CD “Parade Ground”, which compiles single A- and B-sides produced with Daniel B., Patrick Codenys, Colin Newman and Bruno Donini; the studio album “Life”; the expanded CD edition of “The 15th Floor”; the download reissue of “Rosary”; and the biography project “Words Sword Words” with an accompanying CD.
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