Aural Sculptors - The Stranglers Live 1976 to the Present


Welcome to Aural Sculptors, a blog aimed at bringing the music of The Stranglers to as wide an audience as possible. Whilst all of the various members of the band that have passed through the ranks since 1974 are accomplished studio musicians, it is on stage where the band have for me had their biggest impact.

As a collector of their live recordings for many years I want to share some of the better quality material with other fans. By selecting the higher quality recordings I hope to present The Stranglers in the best possible light for the benefit of those less familiar with their material than the hardcore fan.

Needless to say, this site will steer well clear of any officially released material. As well as live gigs, I will post demos, radio interviews and anything else that I feel may be of interest.

In addition, occasionally I will post material by other bands, related or otherwise, that mean a lot to me.

Your comments and/or contributions are most welcome. Please email me at adrianandrews@myyahoo.com.


Saturday 16 May 2020

Chateau Rouge Annemasse France 22nd November 2017


OK this one is a bit of a joint effort.... with minimal effort on my part!

This is Chatts99's work which is always of great quality, throw in a bit of audio wizardry from DomP and you have something rather special.

Here's the story in Chatts' own words:

'The usual group of us decided to head over to France, via Geneva, to catch the first 3 dates of the November French tour, Annemasse, Lyon and Paris. There was a gig between Lyon and Paris but I cant remember if it actually took place. I know it was an almost impossible venue to get to for us as
we like our late nights and comfy travel.

So this is night 1 in Annemasse, almost a suburb of Geneva, right on the border hence travelling via Geneva airport. As typical first nights go, this had it all. Band on great/relaxed form, a bit of rustiness, some good banter even though I don't understand much of the French JJ uses. AND as you will see more when I upload Lyon a slight uniqueness to the setlist.

I haven't been deliberately sitting on this, it had just fallen off the radar, until fellow Stranglers Fan, DIME member and Remaster magician Shadow23, made a comment on a recent Stranglers upload.

So here it is. I have had an original file set on my FLAC player since the show and my fellow travellers have the same file set and I had traded it with one or two fellow tapers. This is not only a serious upgrade of an already very nice recording. But as the work has been done on the raw WAV file this is to be viewed as a completely different version.

Notes directly from Shadow23 on his work are as follows. "Loaded file into Adobe Audition and rack up a bunch of effects to add more life and sparkle. I used a 20 band EQ to boost the keys and guitars at one end and the mid bass at the other, along with some stereo expansion and light multiband compression to even things out"

He has previously told me that this is basically saved on his PC as the "Chatts99" setting.

A couple of pics are included and I believe another fellow Stranglers fan, DIME member Adriana will be adding some artwork as well.

This needs to be played often and loud. It had brought back some great memories of another great trip with the best friends. With the passing of Dave Greenfield the future is unknown, but the music remains and yes this isn't the Band of the 77-82 musical perfection, it doesn't have Hugh Cornwell
at his sarcastic and quick witted best. BUT it is the band that even just over the last 6 years, since I have been recording them, have given me so much to remember.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-kB9dQX0wQ5

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-NqbW6ADx6L

01. Intro-Toiler On The Sea
02. Was It You?
03. Sometimes
04. Grip
05. 15 Steps
06. Nice'n' Sleazy
07. Midnight Summer Dream-European Female
08. Always The Sun
09. Strange Little Gitrl
10. Golden Brown
11. Bear Cage

01. Who Wants The World?
02. Walk On By
03. Dagenham Dave
04. Relentless
05. Peaches
06. Norfolk Coast
07. Hanging Around
08. 5 Minutes
09. Down In The Sewer
10. Encore-Go Buddy Go
11. No More Heroes

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