There's an excellent French review of Factory Star's Enter Castle Perilous on the Vivonzeureux website, if you speak French you can read the original here. If you don't, I'll post my own translation below:"It all started three or four weeks ago with a really nice e-mail, in French, from the independent label Occultation. After this blog (briefly) mentioned the Blue Orchids, a Rough Trade new wave group of the very early 1980s, they drew my attention to the forthcoming release of the first album by Factory Star, the new project led by Martin Bramah who, together with the organist Una Baines, was one of the founder members of The Fall. In 1979 they were also among the first to jump Mark E. Smith’s turbulent ship to found The Blue Orchids.
A nice letter deserves a friendly reply so, after I’d taken a look at how the record was presented on the Occultation website, I decided that I’d write about a Blue Orchids record sometime soon, and that’d then give me the opportunity to announce the release of the Factory Star album.
Except that in the meantime I thought I might as well download the tracks from the album from the link Occultation had given me and I loved it so much I decided I’d much rather write about this new record rather than an old one!
Like Longest Meow by Bobby Bare Jr, Enter Castle Perilous was recorded and mixed - mainly live in the studio - in just a few days and the two records share the same fresh, energetic qualities. Factory Star’s line-up is basic, with Martin Bramah on vocals and guitar, a bass player, a drummer and an organist. This rather prominent organ provides a direct link to the sound of the Blue Orchids. The singing and the structure of some of the songs also allow a line to be drawn all the way back to The Fall (I reckon Bramah is having a bit of fun when he leaves a long silence after the word "Fall" as he sings "This is a warning to you all, This is the story of the fall — of Great Britain" on The Fall Of Great Britain.
One of the other reference points which came to me on first listen was Jonathan Fire*Eater, and the comparison also holds true with the group that came after it, The Walkmen - except that I recently listened to Lisbon, their latest album, and I find even Factory Star’s weakest tracks (although the more I listen to the record the fewer of these I can find) far more exciting than anything on The Walkmen’s album. I’d be hard-pushed to pick out any favourites from the ten tracks, but if I did then Black Comic Book, New Chemical Light and Angel Steps would surely be among them. The organ on Stone Tumbling Stream and Arise Europa! remind me slightly of The Stranglers.
If I had to pick a fault, the thing I like the least is the group’s name, but when you see it right next to the album’s title it’s almost like a literary way of conjuring up an image of a worker entering his factory, and the fact that there’s a song entitled Big Mill and the line "There used to be a factory there" appears in the next track, Away Dull Care, almost seem to back this interpretation up.
So this was a fantastic surprise and a very fine new release for 2011!
Three songs can be heard on the Occultation website, where the record is on sale as an LP, CD or MP3s."
Thanks to Pol Dodu for the review and permission to translate it.
