(Photo by Renaud Monfourny) The 35th anniversary release of Suicide’s third studio album, “A Way of Life”, will be available on May 26th, 2023 through Mute/BMG. The album has been remastered and includes previously unreleased tracks. Suicide, consisting of members Alan Vega and Martin Rev, was a pioneering duo in the punk and synth-pop scene.

The anniversary edition of “A Way of Life” will be released on transparent blue vinyl (including an art card and two bonus tracks), CD (with a 4-page booklet and five bonus tracks), and digitally. Jared Artaud discovered the unreleased bonus tracks while working on the Vega Vault archives. Denis Blackham of Skye Mastering, who worked on the recent remastered reissues of Suicide’s first and second albums, remastered the album. The album’s artwork design and concept were created by Artaud and Michael Handis.

Listen to the unreleased version of Suicide’s 1988 live cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” right below.

“A Way of Life,” originally released in 1988, more than a decade after their groundbreaking self-titled debut, features classic Suicide tracks like “Surrender”, “Jukebox Baby 96”, and “Dominic Christ”. For the production of the album, Alan Vega and Martin Rev collaborated once again with Ric Ocasek, frontman of The Cars.

Suicide, formed in the early 1970s, became an integral part of the New York punk scene by 1976. Their debut album has since been recognized as a significant influence on countless artists and musicians, such as New Order, Depeche Mode, Bruce Springsteen, KLF, Spiritualized, Moby, Soft Cell, The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Sisters of Mercy, Primal Scream, and Nick Cave.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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Out on 25 March 2022 on Mute / BMG is the official collection, “Surrender”, by Suicide (Alan Vega and Martin Rev). The release holds sleeve-notes by longtime fan and friend of the band, Henry Rollins. As Rollins explains: “This gathering of songs is not a ‘best of’ nor is it a ‘definitive’ all-you-need-to-know compilation. It is an introduction that will hopefully compel you to explore the albums.”

“Surrender” includes tracks from their debut album “Suicide” (1977), through to their final studio album release, “American Supreme” (2002), plus two brand new, unheard tracks: “Girl (Unreleased Version)” and “Frankie Teardrop (First Version)”. The track-listing has been collated by Martin Rev, Liz Lamere (Alan Vega’s collaborator and wife), Henry Rollins and Jared Artaud.

All in all 16 tracks which will be released on blood red double vinyl with an embossed, mirror-boarded gatefold sleeve; CD with embossed outer sleeve and digitally.

Here’s already a previously unreleased version of “Frankie Teardrop”, with alternative lyrics. The accompanying short film was directed by Douglas Hart (My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, The Jesus & Mary Chain).

About Suicide

Suicide formed in the early 70s, reemerging in 1976 at the heart of the New York punk scene.

Their debut album – which was given barely any credit at the time – has had an incalculable influence since its release in 1977, and went on to feature in numerous magazine’s Greatest Albums of All Time lists. The volume of artists and musicians they went on to inspire throughout the decades is huge, with New Order, Depeche Mode, Bruce Springsteen, Moby, Soft Cell, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Primal Scream and Nick Cave just a few who have acknowledged their debt to the duo.

The band continued releasing and performing for 40 years, until Alan Vega’s passing in July 2016.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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FTR (Future) is a French trio that saw the daylight in 2012. Based in Paris, Yann Canevet (bass, vocals), Pauline CP (keyboards, programming) and Brice Delourmel (guitar, programming) this year released their second full length album entitled “Manners”. The work has been released in France by Third Coming Records and in the US by Metropolis. The sound can be defined as a mix between cold-wave and shoegaze music with some electronic arrangements on top. It’s an obscure and somewhat disturbing experience, but still a great opus, which incited me to get more info about the band and their new work. I’ve been in touch with Pauline CP.

(Picture credits by Arthur Weed / Interview courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: Can you briefly introduce FTR and the way you got contaminated by the (dark) music virus?

 Pauline: We are three. We’ve always been involved in common musical scenes and projects between Rennes and Paris. When Brice and Yann both came from Rennes to Paris in 2012 they started playing together, and recorded, the first EP “Abyss” in 2013 in Lannion (Brittany). I joined the band during the winter of this same year. Then we released all together our first album “Horizons” (RPUT) in 2015, and toured in China in September 2016. We took our time, and now we come back with a second album, “Manners” (Third Coming Records, Metropolis Records), under the name FTR. It has the same meaning as Future, it’s just a different way to write it.

We have different personal stories about our taste for dark music, but we all can say that it’s been a while, with different shades of darkness. For me, it was fumbling my mother’s CDs when I was a kid, attracted by the artworks, and finding Art Of Noise (cf. “In Visible Silence”), Cocteau Twins (cf. “The Pink Opaque”- comp) and Dead Can Dance (cf. “A Passage In Time”-comp).

Q: FTR stands for ‘future’ while your music is clearly inspired by ‘retro’ elements such  as shoegaze and cold-wave. What is the band name all about  and can you reveal your sources of inspiration?

Pauline: We probably have an ambivalent opinion about the concept of future which explains why we like that word and use it with all the softness and irony possible. We are coming from a classic noise-rock tradition, from the no-wave with Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, then obviously Sonic Youth, Big Black, and definitely The Jesus & Mary Chain. Cold-wave, with The Cure, Bauhaus, Siouxsie… 90’s grunge and shoegaze classics are also part of our influences, from Nirvana to smaller bands like KG. More recent bands like A Place To Bury Strangers, Metz, Soft Moon, Spray Paint or The Name Of The Band have been really important for us for different reasons. 

Q: Another retro element is the vinyl format of “Manners”, which has been released in France  by Third Coming Records and in the US by Metropolis. The vinyl is quite trendy today and often an item for collectors. What does it mean to you and what’s your favorite format (vinyl? CD? Streaming)?

Pauline: We don’t really see vinyl as a retro object, just as one format between others that sometimes is relevant sometimes is not. Both labels have it on vinyl and CD format, only Third Coming Records released it on tape format. Artworks are important for us, as both albums are drawn by the artist Marion Costentin, so vinyl is obviously a good format to appreciate them properly. We don’t have a fetish for a specific format between vinyl, tape, CD,  it depends of the compression and recording. So download mp3 is obviously not the best, but we must admit it’s handy. Streaming is more a way to discover than a way to support and collect music.

Q: What kind of album did you’d in mind when starting the writing of “Manners” and tell us a bit more about the extremely dark sphere recovering the songs?

Pauline: It’s the result of time we spent together, life changes and common energy we had at that time. Yann just dropped all his ideas and we all delved into what you describe as an ‘extremely dark sphere’, because it was it and we were happy to be in it. It was actually a lot of fun. 

Q: How would you compare the evolution  from your debut album “Horizons” (2015) towards  “Manners”? 

Pauline: “Horizons” was more atmospheric, cold, kinda pop in a way. With “Manners” we mixed our noisy and cold influences in a more violent and straightforward atmosphere. We changed the dynamic of composition, Yann had a huge creativity flow, and we decided to reduce the number of layers to get closer to how we sound live. We delegated all the mixing work to Bernard Canévet (Yann used to do the pre-mix on the first album) so that we can all be listeners of our music and it worked pretty well!

Q: You’re based in Paris, which has been last week world-news because of the terrible fire in  the Cathedral Notre-Dame. In which way do you feel affected  by this tragedy and how do you see Paris for artists like you dealing with cold-wave/shoegaze music?

Pauline: That night when Notre-Dame rooftop burnt, I had a drink with a friend in a bar in front of a church. That one friend, told me there was a theory that churches were actually alien spaceships, as if arched-buttress were space launcher that could be activated once it will be the time to do so. Since then, I can’t stop looking at churches as spaceships.

To answer your second question, it’s not that bad, but it could definitely be better.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

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