Released September 1981 Length 40:45 Artist This Heat Label Rough Trade Records | Recorded 1981 Language English Release date September 1981 | |
 | ||
Studio Cold Storage
Zipper Mobile
Mekon
Berry St
Vineyard
Surrey Sound
Nivelles Producer This Heat and David Cunningham Genres Post-punk, Experimental rock Similar Out of Cold Storage, This Heat, Made Available: John Pee, For a Reason, Jane from Occupied Europe | ||
This heat deceit full album
Deceit is the second and final studio album by English experimental rock band This Heat. It was recorded in 1981 and released in September of the same year by Rough Trade Records. The title is in part a pun on the band's name.
Contents
- This heat deceit full album
- This heat sleep
- Background
- Release
- Critical reception
- Track listing
- Personnel
- Songs
- References
Deceit is regarded as a classic of the post-punk era, and was ranked at number 20 on Pitchfork's list of the greatest albums of the 1980s.
This heat sleep
Background
In a 1991 interview, Charles Hayward explained that the threat of nuclear warfare motivated the band and provided the album with an underlying theme: "The whole speak, 'Little Boy', 'Big Boy' [sic], calling missiles cute little names. The whole period was mad! We had a firm belief that we were going to die and the record was made on those terms.… The whole thing was designed to express this sort of fear, angst, which the group was all about, really." The album's subject matter also deals with war and imperialism. The cover art reflects these concerns, and includes a photomontage of images such as mushroom clouds, thematic maps depicting nuclear arsenals and photographs of Ronald Reagan, Leonid Brezhnev and Nikita Khrushchev.
As with other This Heat recordings, much of the album was recorded at Cold Storage, a disused refrigerated storeroom at a former meat pie factory in Acre Lane, Brixton, England. The music included new improvisations along with songs the band had been playing during live performances (portions of these songs were culled from actual concert recordings). As Hayward describes, "some of the album was really plush sounding, some dim and pokey. Sometimes it would sound like the machinery was breaking up. We deliberately would make it sound as though the record player was exploding."
Release
During the 1990s, intermittent availability made Deceit a rarity and a collector's item among fans. In 2006, This Is, a Recommended Records imprint, released a remastered version of Deceit as part of the 6-CD Out of Cold Storage box set. This Is also released the album as a separately available CD. In January 2016, Light in the Attic imprint Modern Classics Recordings pressed remastered reissues of Deceit, This Heat, and Health and Efficiency on vinyl.
Critical reception
Deceit has been well-received by critics.
AllMusic wrote of the album: "Out of all the boundary breaking that occurred during the fertile era of post-punk, This Heat's Deceit is one of the most expansive, imaginative and remarkably wild records to have been produced during the time—and very possibly the last three decades." The Trouser Press Record Guide described the album as "austere, brilliant and indescribable." Tiny Mix Tapes called it a "radiation-soaked masterpiece".
Track listing
All tracks written by This Heat (Charles Hayward, Gareth Williams, Charles Bullen).
Personnel
Songs
1Sleep2:14
2Paper Hats6:03
3Triumph2:56