Name: Fabula Mendax
Brand: The Monochrome Set

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

TR449CL

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Colour

green

Colour details

Dark Green.

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Discogs ID

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: Yes

Extended format

Extended format: Yes

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2019-09-27

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Shellshock

Tax rate GB

UPC / Barcode

4015698496062

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1 / Extended format: Yes / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: Yes / Signed copies: No / green

TR449LP

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black

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format: No

4015698460803

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "4015698460803"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

The Monochrome Set

Genre GB

New Wave / Post Punk

Label GB

Tapete

Albums of the Year - 2019

We have always loved the Monochrome Set at Rough Trade - from the label releasing their early records to seeing them play all through their career, so we are incredibly pleased to be sharing with the band their new album on Dark Green Vinyl. It is also one of their best ever releases. 

At the end of the 70s, The Monochrome Set were part of the first wave of 'post punk' bands. Right from the beginning, the band earned a solid reputation as purveyors of fine pop, gaining praise from 80s contemporaries such as Morrissey and Edwyn Collins. Importantly, in later years this praise has continued with artists such as Franz Ferdinand, The Divine Comedy and Graham Coxon, all citing the band as a key influence on their own work.

The Monochrome Set sound has often been described as 'timeless', and that alone explains why, over the years, the band has continued gaining admirers. <i>Fabula Mendax</i> is based on manuscripts written in the 15th Century by Armande de Pange, a companion of Jehanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc). Follow Armande as she flees her unhinged family, only to be caught up in the chaos of The Hundred Years' War. She encounters and trails the enigmatic Joan, later becoming a part of her expanding group of followers. As they travel west into the war zone of Northern France, they meet a motley medley of scheming noblewomen, bellicose knights, nefarious bishops, and assorted rotters, rogues and renegades. 

This is The Monochrome Set at its most ornate, and, much like Joan of Arc's ensemble, features a myriad of fiddlers, pluckers, beaters, tinklers and wailers, surrounding a central core of notorious crackpots. The hauntingly melodic pop harks back to the early TMS period of <i>Eine Symphonie Des Grauens</i>, but is now complemented by a (periodically unemployed) vampire's orchestra, whose cha-cha-charnel chiming careens into carnal rhyming chanting, while saints and demons trip lightly across the slick red fields of liberty.

Fabula Mendax

Music GB