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Album
Tour de Force
The Ruling Class →4,161 listeners46,571 plays
2000s2008good stuffmadchesterread it in books
about this album
LIFE1005: The Ruling Class – Tour de Force cdep + 7” Photograph by: Antonio Silva CD: 4 tracks / 7": 2 tracks The few years that straddled the late 1980s and early ’90s have long been considered one of British rock music’s most vibrant periods – that moment when the Stone Roses, Ride, My Bloody Valentine and the like defied the notion that ‘indie’ was, by definition, underground and underachieving. Bolstered by unassailable self-confidence and innovative sonic ideas, their albums became generational touchstones, and are now not only inextricably linked to the times in which they were created, they’re regarded as the precursors to the cultural phenomenon that was Britpop. But that same period has also long been considered one of music’s great anti-climaxes, a dashed opportunity. The Stone Roses disintegrated amidst drugs, warring egos, and too much time and money (as did Happy Mondays); My Bloody Valentine became paralyzed by its pursuit of an indefinable perfection; and countless others lost their original, most potent vision to the tides of fashion. It was, in fact, a moment concluded by such a heartbreaking failure of collective will that its music came to sound like a frozen remnant of a lost age, never to be reexamined or pushed forward. Until Tomas Kubowicz, that is. The Swedish guitarist and songwriter was living in his native Norrköping when, years after it had first come and gone, he heard this music for the first time. “Sweden is, musically, quite Anglo-inspired;
