Second Layer - World of Rubber (1981)

Here's another reminder for my kicking myself at having somehow missed the Sound during that year when they were at their peak and probably would have displaced Joy Division and the usual bunch as soundtrack to my entire existence, had I actually been aware of them. Second Layer were either forerunners to the Sound or a side project, depending on which bit of internet you're looking at. I had some misgivings about this reissue of a partially unknown quantity, not least the titles hinting at the sort of thing I'd rather not discover about what my potential heroes got up to in their own time, because unless you're Soft Cell, culturally Belgian, or the version of Adam & the Ants which hadn't yet got around to recording Dirk Wears White Sox, you're probably going to sound like a twat. Thankfully, whatever that World of Rubber may have been, it doesn't seem to involve Adrian Borland breathing heavily, so far as I can tell - and lyrically he was always very direct and not prone to anything ghastly smuggled across the sexual border as a metaphor.

Second Layer were more or less the Sound stripped right down to just bass, angular guitar, and primitive drum machine fed through a bunch of pedals - something inhabiting the same sonic ballpark as Métal Urbain and the first couple of Cabaret Voltaire albums but with Borland's characteristically anthemic touch - which you might not think likely to work in such a setting, but it really does and as such sits well alongside the first couple of albums by the Sound as a slightly moodier cousin. This CD reissue ends with Skylon, a track previously unreleased from a related project of breezier disposition providing powerful contrast to the thoroughly bleak Black Flowers, the original closing number. The more Borland I hear, the more I wonder why the Sound's reputation never came anywhere close to matching the quality of their music, because surely it can't all come down to Korova Records spunking away their entire budget on Echo and the sodding Bunnymen, can it? Given Borland's tragic passing in 1999, it may be a bit late to even ask the question, but should anyone be inclined to do so, this reissue serves as further testimony to the power of his distinctive and yet overlooked voice.