Room to Live

Background

Room to Live was recorded as a quick followup to Hex Enduction Hour, which had been released in March of the same year. It was to be Marc Riley's last album with the group.

The group had originally entered the studio to record a single, but Mark E. Smith prevailed upon them to record more songs, all of which were new to the band and had not previously been rehearsed or performed live. In accordance with this experimental approach, members were deliberately excluded from certain tracks. Smith also stated of the songs that "some of them are just me and Karl double-tracked" Whilst these remarks resulted in considerable conjecture among fans, the exact lineups for each track have never been properly confirmed. In a letter to City Life magazine in April 1984, Smith noted that Riley only played on two tracks on Room to Live, and in 2008 Riley confirmed via his BBC6 radio show that he did not appear on all tracks. In his book "The Big Midweek", Steve Hanley states that "Marquis Cha-Cha" was recorded by a trio of himself, Burns and Smith and also confirms the role of Arthur Kadmon (from Ludus and credited as "Cadman") in the recording of "Hard Life In Country" at a session to which neither Craig Scanlon nor Marc Riley were invited. Hanley's version, however, appears to refute the much-rumoured story, as relayed by Mick Middles in his book "The Fall" (co-authored with Mark E Smith), that suggested that Kadmon recorded approximately sixteen seconds of guitar and was then dismissed.

The album was completed prior to the group's tour of Australia and New Zealand in July and August 1982, and thus songs from the record feature heavily on the live album Fall in a Hole.

Track listing

The German pressing of the album added the 1981 single "Lie Dream of a Casino Soul" and its B-side, "Fantastic Life", to the end of side B. This inclusion was repeated on the first UK CD edition of the album issued via Cog Sinister in 1998 (mastered from a particularly noisy German vinyl copy) but was removed on the 2005 remaster (from the superior original Kamera vinyl), since the two tracks had since been included in the Slates reissue. Other contemporaneous bonus material was added in its place.

Critical reception

AllMusic said of the album: "Room to Live marks one of the most inspired periods of the group".

Personnel