Rage in Heaven (1993)

Rage in Heaven by Dark Company.

Rage in Heaven was Dark Company’s second album, recorded at Silent Running Studios, Exeter, in 1992-3. The writers and performers were Pete, Jeff and George, which we regard as Dark Company’s second incarnation.

Most of the voices and guitars were recorded on a Tascam TSR8 8-track reel-to-reel. A few of the guitars on Sacrifice, Medicines and The Forger, and all of Jeff’s bass apart from Spoiler and Lookin’ Bad, were recorded as samples.

The MIDI parts were all driven by an Atari 1040ST running Cubase v2.01, which was linked to the 8-track via a SMPTE box and a stripe on track 8. The studio keyboard was a Cheetah MK5V, which had no on-board sounds of its own. Everything was mixed in real time on a Studiomaster Proline 16-4-8 to a Casio portable DAT recorder. Rage in Heaven was later remastered by George in 2012 at Wud Records Studio One using voodoo and a cement mixer.

The synths and drum machines you hear on Rage in Heaven were rather new at the time of making this recording, although nowadays they would all be considered vintage. Beside the Akai S900 sampler, the sounds came from a Kawai K4r, a Yamaha TG33 and an Emu Pro-Cussion.

Wud Records offers support to anyone who has any of these items as we have the exact same synths in our studio too. Email info@wudrecords.co.uk with the name of the synth in the subject bar and one of our team will try to help.

Outboard gear included Drawmer compressors and gates, Alesis Microverb and Quadraverb+, an ART Multiverb and an Aphex Type-C Aural Exciter. The whole place looked like the bridge of a spaceship with all its pretty LEDs twinkling away.

Marcus created the front cover art for Rage in Heaven in Silent Running Studios when George was working on the mix. He wanted the music to influence him as it was being made, and thus the cover was made at the same time as the music. The image was created with tiny dots from a Rotring pen, similar to the style of Aubrey Beardsley, who Pete in particular was a fan of and who is also referred to in the song Under the Hill. The finished piece was photographed and the final image used was the negative, to make it look like tiny stars in space.

01	Sacrifice
02	Medicines
03	Stimulants
04	Golden Eye
05	Terminal Road
06	Spoiler
07	Lookin’ Bad
08	Under the Hill
09	The Forger
10	Last Train to Heaven