I am not avant-garde I am a deserter': Blixa Bargeld, Einsturzende Neubauten and the reinvention of Berlin Marr also recalled the time he managed a goth clothes shop in Manchester, helping Robb to chart the rise of goths visual identity. The roots of The Cure’s Gothic résumé come in the shape of three albums: Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography,” Tolhurst writes. “The Cure needed a way out of the situation that we found ourselves in, but first we had to undergo a quest to fully understand who we were and where we came from.” I've seen critics of the book criticize Robb's florid and hyperbolic prose. Personally, I've got no problem with that element. Goth is all about unapologetic emotionalism. Going "over the top" is literally what the word "Gothic" means. Yeah, Robb's gushing gets a little much sometimes. But if you're trying to capture the sound of, for example, Killing Joke in words, only hyperbole will do. Dry text could not do the subject justice. The Cure said they definitely weren’t goth, but for many fans they of course absolutely were, and that inherent contradiction is fascinating,” Robb said. “Despite not believing they were goth, they made one of the most iconic goth albums with ‘Pornography’. It was a template for many goth bands to follow and a game changer.”

THE ART OF DARKNESS | Lincoln Book Festival THE ART OF DARKNESS | Lincoln Book Festival

Bowie has a whole chapter dedicated to his influence on the genre. “Goth was a kind of dark glam and Bowie helped to create that: he was important in creating the theatre of it all,” said Robb. “His lyrics and music took us into darker places; he gave goth the imaginative space it needed to exist.” Ok, I love this book; it covers a period of music I lived through and still listen to this very day. The style is very detailed and lyrical, covering the bands and the times. If you have any interest in the history of this music, this is the book to get. Purists might find it frustrating but if you're more of a generalist you should find plenty to enjoy and appreciate. I already knew a fair chunk of what's contained here but also discovered some new and interesting insights, and a few new artists and albums to explore.The group reformed in 2010 and have since made two highly idiosyncratic and acclaimed albums. ... more Goth is a much derided and devalued genre. It has changed much over the years, but it was, for a while, the dominant form of Post Punk music. It has depth, variety and longevity – much of which it is not generally credited with. Thank the dark lords then for John Robb’s latest book The Art of Darkness – The History of Goth.

Goth: Three fascinating books explore a musical subculture

He even thinks Noel Gallagher’s latest is “a bit gothy”. “It’s the Robert Smith remix of course, it’s great,” Robb said. “It just shows that when you look closely, goth is still everywhere. I think it always will be.” As the drummer and keyboard player in The Cure, Tolhurst was at the epicentre of this post-punk scene and shares moving anecdotes about his interactions with the key players. Robb draws on his own archive to lace his epic history with quotes from the most enigmatic and articulate musicians of the time, including Cave, Jaz Coleman, Andrew Eldritch, Blixa Bargeld and Gavin Friday. Unsworth, a music journalist who has gone on to write six pop culture-laced noir novels and an acclaimed biography of the punk icon Jordan, uses her poetic eye for detail and a specific timeline to tell her own spellbinding tale. This textual Gormenghast starts out SO WELL. By the end, however, I wanted to throw it at Robb's head, the editor's head, and the head(s) of everyone who let it go to press in this condition. At this book's price point, this level of sloppiness is inexcusable. READ MORE: The Cure photographer Paul Cox: “Robert Smith is a normal bloke – but he has a presence”

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It’s a thought-provoking question that the author leaves open-ended. But like Schrödinger’s experimental cat, it is clear that Goth is currently both dead and very much alive. Tolhurst’s engaging historical memoir is the third of three books this year to examine Goth music and culture, following on from John Robb’s Art of Darkness: The History of Goth and Cathi Unsworth’s Season of the Witch: The Book of Goth (published in May).

The Art Of Darkness: The History Of Goth by John Robb - Goodreads

I'm told there are sporadic factual errors: studio names, recording times, and so forth. Aside from a glaring reference to Alan Moore as a "famous comic book ARTIST," most those errors slid past me. In any case, the majority of this section draws from personal accounts, and so those errors may simply come from disparities between memory and records.All the children are insane, or people are strange: the (un)holy trinity: The Doors/Velvets/Stooges Literature and art also feature heavily in these early chapters. As John Robb himself explained “ What I’ve realised is that every generation is dealing with its blues and dealing with it in the contemporary technology of the time. So, in the 19th century, you’d have a quill and write a poem or something, but in the post-punk period, because music was central to our culture, music was where people embraced melancholy and found the beauty of melancholy.”

John Robb on his massive new goth book: “It’s simple: no John Robb on his massive new goth book: “It’s simple: no

While this does take a while to get through it is worth it to set the scene before we get to the bulk of the book which, of course, focuses on the musical trend that began in the late 1970s through to the mid-1990s (he does go beyond this as ‘goth’ didn’t suddenly vanish in 1995, but this period is the main focus). Interviews with the main players are a huge part of The Art of Darkness, and an interview with Banshees bass player and founder member Steve Severin is a rare treat and the band’s history is discussed at length. In Art of Darkness, Robb writes: “The world is full of newer bands touched by the dark velvet hand of goth”, and Fontaines DC are a perfect example. Grian Chatten has spoken about the influence The Cure’s 2001 Greatest Hits had on him as a child, Conor Curley has described the Gun Club’s Mother of Earth as his favourite guitar riff of all time and the ghosts of Leonard Cohen and Lee Hazlewood (another of Unsworth’s Gothfathers) hover over the shimmering fairytales on Chatten’s beautiful solo album, Chaos For the Fly. Gloriously knowledgeable and inclusive, rich with words like crystalline, lysergic, spectral, and stuffed with stories about the bands who changed your life as a teenager." Irish Independent The book is the first major and only complete comprehensive overview of Goth music and culture and its lasting legacy. Starting with a night out in a Goth club it then goes on a deep dive around the culture!I realize I'm prejudiced here, but the entire World of Darkness - that "Gothic-Punk" setting that unleashed more baby bats than the entire catalog of the (Southern) (Death) Cult - is summed up by a single mention of Vampire: The Masquerade... a mention it shares with Skyrim and "Bloodlines." The fact that the latter is A SPIN-OFF OF VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE referred to as if it's a game of its own shows just how little John Robb knows or cares about anything except that brief period when he and his friends were cool. This is not helped by pretty much all of the leading lights of the Goth scene denying they were ever Goth at all. One reason for this is that the term had a negative connotation from the beginning, with some bands not wanting to be put in the same category as others they felt little connection with. The term was later dumbed down even further with the likes of Fields of the Nephilim being derided as ‘Goff’. MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window) Robb recalled how Bauhaus, who are considered to be the forefathers of British goth, saw Bowie perform ‘Starman’ on Top Of The Pops and described it as a “profound turning point in their lives.” “It’s simple,” Robb continued. “No Bowie, no scene.” Membranes frontman and journalist John Robb has spoken to NME about his new book detailing the origins and rise of goth.