Two versions: Ltd ed Black and White (ltd to 300 copies) OR Black vinyl - both with bonus 7"
First time vinyl edition of Ramleh's 1987 rubicon moment. Originally released on cassette only and featuring just four tracks, Hole in the Heart was both a re-emergence and reinvention for the band. Having spent the few years prior to its release in silence, Gary Mundy re-appeared with something of a new vision, adapting four songs he'd written in response to Jean Genet's death into a Ramleh album that seems to leave behind the dogma of their power electronics roots. This is a noisy and abrasive record no doubt, but is it power electronics as such? Fans at the time certainly didn't think so, and listening now, it's clear it's an uneasy and often unique hybrid of squalling distortion, psychedelic expansion, industrial intensity and mournful electronics. This new edition originally saw the light of day in 2009 as a 2CD set containing extra tracks made in the same vein just after Hole in the Heart, and is now presented here as a double LP edition. It plays as if always intended this way, Mundy clearly in a creative hotzone as he was configuring the band into new shapes beyond their audience's expectation. Though Ramleh continue to this day, there still seems to be a strange unknown magic around their activity, the product of something only the very best cult acts possess. Hole in the Heart does a great job of reflecting that cultdom, evidence of a band spiralling off into new territory and never coming back. As ever, it's worth taking that journey with them. Edition of 300. Will not hang around. other record by Ramleh or anybody else and has taken on a life of its own far from the cassette only tribute to Jean Genet that nobody heard back in 1987.
