♦️𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐀𝐑𝐘 of “𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐁𝐎𝐍 𝐊𝐈𝐃”♦️

Today we have a second ♦️𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐀𝐑𝐘♦️ to celebrate: “𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐁𝐎𝐍 𝐊𝐈𝐃”, a collaboration of Brian and Alpinestars, was released as single 𝟮𝟬 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗼 on June 3rd 2002. You can also find it on the album “White Noise” that was put out on June 8th that year. “Carbon Kid” was recorded at Townhouse Studios in London and produced by Alpinestars and Andy Green. It's an interesting fact that David Bascombe, who did the mixing, also worked on a number of Placebo songs over the years.

🎬 𝗖𝗔𝗥𝗕𝗢𝗡 𝗞𝗜𝗗 – 𝗢𝗙𝗙𝗜𝗖𝗜𝗔𝗟 𝗩𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗢
🎵 https://bit.ly/3gJT7lq 🎵

Photo credit: Screenshot from the video, unknown (5) / edit by Silke

The video was directed by Dougal Wilson and published exactly one week after the single. Wilson said that the idea for this clip actually came from buying a video about running down corridors, and in connection with the song title “Carbon Kid” he imagined that it could be about making synthetic humans. So in the music clip you can see two scientists in a laboratory where they use two robots that look like Brian for a kind of real life video game.


🎬 𝗠𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗢𝗙 𝗖𝗔𝗥𝗕𝗢𝗡 𝗞𝗜𝗗
🎵 https://bit.ly/3Jy4Vmd 🎵


Alpinestars were an electric rock duo from Manchester. Richard Woolgar and Glyn Thomas, the two halves of the band, got to know Placebo because they had the same management. After the “Black market music” tour Brian stayed in the studio for a while when he was looking for a new flat. Alpinestars were recording there at that time and so the guys started to hang out.


Glyn Thomas: “We didn't know who would be singing “Carbon Kid”, but we knew that Brian was sort of up for doing it, so we just gave it a go” (see quotes below). They handed him over a CD with the music to listen to and the Placebo singer liked it. The song was recorded very quickly.
Brian revealed that they went into the studio inbetween a few beers in the pub and that the vocals were done in about an hour. “I can't really imagine any kind of collaboration when you're the one who has to do a lot of work, you know. It's just something you do for fun“, he explained in an interview with DNAsix when he talked about “Carbon Kid”.

Photo credit: Tibor Bozi

📌 𝗕𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗛𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗬 📌
Richard Woolgar and Glyn Thomas met each other in 1995. They were in separate bands that shared the same rehearsal room. They found they had more in common with each other than with their current groups, so they started their first band Maxim. Although they never produced anything they gained the attention of the promoter of a local Manchester club. Woolgar and Thomas were invited to play there. They changed the band name into Alpinestars (after a mountain bike that Thomas owned). The performance was a success and the band signed with Faith and Hope Records. Alpinestars debuted in August 1999 with an EP titled "Las Vegas." It was followed by two other EPs, "Silicon Chick" and "Kitzbuhel Weekend". Their first commercial single "77 Sunset Strip" and the first album “B.A.S.I.C.“ (stands for "Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code") were both released in summer 2000. Alpinestars left their record label in 2001and published their second and last major album “White Noise“ a year later with Riverman Records.


🎬 𝗖𝗔𝗥𝗕𝗢𝗡 𝗞𝗜𝗗 (𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗢𝗡 𝗩𝗜𝗩𝗔 𝗧𝗩)
🎵 https://bit.ly/3MeKGLH 🎵


📌 𝗚𝗟𝗬𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗔𝗦 𝗢𝗡 “𝗖𝗔𝗥𝗕𝗢𝗡 𝗞𝗜𝗗” 📌
📢 "And we didn't know at the time who would be singing “Carbon Kid”, but we knew that Brian was sort of up for doing it, so we just gave it a go. And it absolutely worked. [...] Well, we've known him for a while. He was living in the flat above the studio we were working in. He sort of woke up at three in the afternoon, and we gave him the CD to have a listen to. He really liked it and he came down and did the vocals that evening. It all worked out really well."
(Outburn magazine, 2003)


📢 “Brian is also a very good chef, so we invited him to take part in one of our new recipes. But without warning, he sprayed our creation with one of his powders, the insolent! When we tasted the mixture, we have to move as never before, and our hearts began to beat faster and faster. What was this ingredient? He never confessed!“
(Premonition magazine, June 2002)

Photo credit: Channel 5 

📌 𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗗 𝗪𝗢𝗢𝗟𝗚𝗔𝗥 𝗢𝗡 “𝗖𝗔𝗥𝗕𝗢𝗡 𝗞𝗜𝗗” 📌
📢 “We weren't going to have any guest vocalists on the album at all, except that Brian had said a while ago when we did a remix of Placebo "if you ever want a vocalist just let me know". He was staying in the flat above where we were in the studio so we left a CD-R outside his room and at 4 o'clock the day before he was supposed to leave he ran down and was like I've learnt the lyrics, I wanna do it.”
(Designer Magazine, 2002)


📌 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗢𝗡 𝗔𝗟𝗣𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗦 𝗔𝗡𝗗 “𝗖𝗔𝗥𝗕𝗢𝗡 𝗞𝗜𝗗” 📌
📢 “I've sung an afternoon with the Alpinestars. We went into the studio inbetween a few beers in the pub. I recorded the vocals in an hour and that was it. I can't really imagine any kind of collaboration when you're the one who has to do a lot of work, you know. It's just something you do for fun.“
(DNAsix, March 2003)


📢 "Well when we were making 'Black market music', we got a phone call from our management saying 'we want to manage another band, if that's OK with you' and we said, 'yeah sure that's fine as long as they're not shit'. And an Alpinestars track came out on an NME free CD and I heard it when we were at Olympic Studios and was really, really impressed. It really reminded me of Kraftwerk and their early stuff which is really quite cold and robotic in a similar way. So we were totally down with it and we were really happy with the fact that our managers who are total rock heads were getting into some electronic tunes. And so the Alpinestars did their first album 'Basic' which we really liked and they also did the 'Taste In Men' remix, which still stands as one of the best ones. And after we'd mixed the album I still found myself looking for a flat and staying in the studio flat above the recording studio in Shepard's Bush, and I didn't actually manage to find myself a place until after we got back off tour, so I ended up staying there for a while. And after touring, the Alpinestars were in the studio doing their second album and they were my downstairs neighbors. They were doing this album, 'White Noise' and I used to go down and use the washing machine a lot, cos I didn't have one, and we just started hanging out and they just wanted me to try 'Carbon Kid'. So I listened to it and then we went to the pub, then back to the studio, did two takes, the second was the one, went back to pub and that was that. And for me it was really good cos I didn't write the lyrics, didn't write the vocal melody line. Just my soul purpose there was to be the singer and it was responsibility free. There was the performance, but there's just no pressure, which was why it kind of like happened so quickly and why I think it's so natural and so accomplished."
(Silver Rocket magazine, 2002)

Photo credit: James Sharrock

📜 𝗟𝗬𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗦
Image image you do what you want,
Image image you do what you want,
Image image you do what you want,
You're a carbon kid
With a sinister diagram


Image image we're leaving the ground,
Image image we're leaving the ground
Image image we're leaving the ground,
Image image we'll never be found,
You're a carbon kid
With a sinister diagram
With a sinister diagram
Sinister diagram


And when this half is over and
We claim our second skin,
We can can compliment each other
On the state that we are in,
And when we leave this place forever and
We're floating round in space,
Take the easy way to heaven with a smile upon your face


You're a carbon kid with a sinister diagram,
Image image you do what you want,
Image image you do what you want,
Image image you do what you want,
You're a carbon kid with a sinister diagram,
You're a carbon kid with a sinister diagram,
You're a carbon kid with a sinister diagram,
You're a carbon kid with a sinister diagram,
Sinister diagram,
You're a carbon kid with a sinister diagram,

Post by Silke