⭐𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗜𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗔𝗥𝗬: 𝗕𝗟𝗔𝗖𝗞 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞𝗘𝗧 𝗠𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗖⭐

Today we celebrate the ♦️𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐀𝐑𝐘♦️ of “Black market music”, Placebo's third studio album, which was released on October 9th 2000. It was recorded at Olympic Studios, Townhouse Studios and Moody Studios, all three located in London. The album was produced by Paul Corkett who had already worked on the band's previous record “Without you I'm nothing” as additional engineer. “Black market music” reached no. 6 in the UK Albums Chart.

📀 𝗕𝗟𝗔𝗖𝗞 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞𝗘𝗧 𝗠𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗖 (𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗹𝗯𝘂𝗺)
🎵 http://bit.ly/309mIuf 🎵

Photo credit: Cover of the album, Kevin Westenberg (2), Scarlet Page, Morten Holm / edit by Silke

"It rocks harder then the first two albums put together. It deals with violence quite a lot”, Brian said in an interview with Kerrang (July 15th 2000). "It's quite a dark record on a lyrical level. It's still about falling in love, it's still about the impossibility of love in some places, there's quite a lot of religious imagery and a smattering of politics", he explained it to a journalist of Sunday Times one day later.

📍 Four singles were released from the album, all of them reached top positions in the international charts. The lead single was “Taste in men“, a song that's "quite unrepresentative of the rest of the album and it creates an interest because people wonder what the hell the records gonna be like", as Brian stated. It was followed by “Slave to the wage“, “Special K“ and “Black-eyed“.

📍 Two guest vocalists feature on “Black market music“: Severe Loren sings the backing vocals on “Taste in men” and “Special K”, “Spite and Malice” is a duet of Brian and Justin Warfield of She Wants Revenge who sings the rap part of the song.
“Slave to the wage” samples “Texas never whispers” by US indie rock band Pavement. “Commercial for Levi” is dedicated to sound engineer Levi Tecofski who once saved Brian's life when he pulled him back from the street before he could get hit by a car. The rest of the album is dedicated to the memory of music publicist Scott Piering.
The last song on “Black market music” is a hidden track called “Black market blood”. All songs were produced by Paul Corkett except for “Taste in men”, which was produced by Dare Mason.

📍 The guiding thread that runs through the album is that what people most get addicted to in life are love and drugs. “People have the same reactions to both. That theme runs though our work. This idea of addiction, whether it be to people, emotions, substances or situations“ (Brian, Melody Maker, October 20th 2000).

📍 It's interesting that Brian gave all the songs of “Black market music” a second title when he started to write down the tracklisting. They didn't make it on the album but Brian used them to sum up in one phrase what the songs represented to him. "Narcoleptic" for example was "Love and drugs are one big pillow".

Photo credit: Kevin Westenberg

📌 𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗙𝗔𝗡 𝗢𝗡 “𝗕𝗟𝗔𝗖𝗞 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞𝗘𝗧 𝗠𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗖“ 📌
📢 “I think its an angrier record. I think is more coherent. I think it rocks more. I think we had all of that in the back of our minds when we wrote this album.“
(Hip Online, February 1st, 2001)

📢 "The new album is the one we are most proud of. It is also the first one where we sort of take a production credit. We did the production with a guy called Paul Corkett who did the engineering in the second album. We just had a really good time recording it as well, we sort of laughed our way through this one. I think if there was one thing we wanted to do with it, it was to have more fast tracks and slow tracks, but nothing suffered from having a divided energy."
(Top 40, October 2000)

📢 "With the first album, it felt under-produced. The second album felt as though it was overproduced. Also our relationship with our producer on the second album wasn't great, so we just wanted to get away from this producer with a big "P". We just got on very well with Paul as a person. He is very humble and a very experienced person and could capture a bigger rock sound. We also moved on as songwriters and players. It felt right from the word go. It took a lot longer than the second album it's a bit like a baby. Fertilization in October and nine months later, three proud fathers."
(Top 40, October 2000)

📌 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗢𝗡 “𝗕𝗟𝗔𝗖𝗞 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞𝗘𝗧 𝗠𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗖“ 📌
📢 "It's aggressive. It's angry. It's our big rock album, the one we've always wanted to make."
(Sunday Mail, October 1st 2001)

📢 “It's our most political album.“
(A Toute Allure, February 21st 2001)

📢 "To be honest, it's been an incredibly joyful experience. We laughed all the way through the last nine months. It feels a bit like the end of a trilogy. Everything we've attempted before we've finally realised and purified to make this glorious album."
(Select, September 20th 2000)

📢 "It's anger and energy. It's the final part of our trilogy.“
(Kerrang, July 22nd 2000)

📢 "'Black market music' gives an "illegal" connotation, the idea of a forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge."
(Lib, 2000)

Photo credit: Kevin Westenberg

📢 "'Black market music' is a reference to something that's sordid and seedy and kept under the counter, basically something illegal that you shouldn't really have. That's where the idea came from, but we were in Japan the other day hanging out with Taylor Hawkins from the Foo Fighters and we told him the name of the album and he was like 'Oh yeah after that music store in LA' - and then it actually occurred to me that it was also the name of the place where we'd bought some of our most expensive guitars in America. We'd never put two and tow together until Taylor had pointed it out to us - so there we were trying to think of a really philosophical answer, but now we can just say it's named after a music store."
(Rock Sound, October 2000)

📢 "We approached with a creative openness and a spirit of camaraderie - we wanted to make a timeless rock album, so we explored every idea that we wanted to. We threw as much shit against the wall as possible and saw what stuck, and that made the beautiful painting that is ‘Black market music‘."
(Pulse, April 2000)

📢 "It's difficult not to write something that's auto-biographical but when one grows as an author the writing changes. This record for example, it's less made of introspective looks and more of the reaction to the world and to what hurts you and makes you angry. It's more political."
(DNMais, October 14th 2000)

📢 “It revisits the no-holds-barred punk pop element of the first album, and the more melancholic side of 'Without you I'm nothing'.“
(Boyz, September 2000)

📢 ”It was the most pleasurable recording experience we've ever had, because there was a real spirit of communication, exchange of ideas. For the last two albums we've had female engineers, and it's always been good to have a woman in the room to balance out the testosterone. For the first time, we were able to put the sounds from our heads on tape, and I think we made a really cohesive album. Even though it's quite varied, it has a strong identity. It's aggressive and angry.”
(LA Weekly, May 2001)

📢 “I'm very happy, it's the most accomplished record that we've done so far. It feels like a much more complex and sophisticated album musically and it's like a distillation of everything we've attempted to do in the past. As a band, we were conscious that we really wanted to make a bigger-sounding rock record and maybe have a few less slow tracks on it. More upbeat and more accessible.“
(Melody Maker, October 20th 2000)

📢 “‘Black market music’ was a record we were proud of at the time but it definitely sounded self-produced – it has that one-dimensional, blanket sound.”
(Rock Sound, April 2003)

📢 “Looking back on it I think it was a mistake to produce it ourselves. It just sounds one dimensional. Expecially compared to 'Without you I'm nothing'.“
(DNAsix, March 2003)

Post by Silke