Fiat Lux - Ark Of Embers (1985)

Fiat Lux are an English synth-pop band formed in Wakefield, Yorkshire, in 1982, by Steve Wright (vocals) and David P Crickmore (guitars, bass, keyboards), and joined shortly afterwards by Ian Nelson, younger brother of Be-Bop Deluxe's Bill Nelson, on saxophone and keyboards, complementing the classic line-up of the band. Wright and Crickmore had both attended Bretton Hall College, Wakefield, where they studied drama, with Wright later joining theatre company Yorkshire Actors where he met musician Bill Nelson. After impressing him with a demo tape, Nelson produced two of the demo's tracks, 'Feels Like Winter Again'/'This Illness', releasing them as a single on his Cocteau Records label in November 1982. The single gained radio airplay and led to the band signing a record deal with major label Polydor, and they had minor hits on the label with their singles 'Secrets' and 'Blue Emotion'. Crickmore departed after the chart failure of their fifth Polydor single release 'House Of Thorns', but the band continued recording some songs with session musicians for a proposed second album, although this was abandoned when the group split up in 1985. Thirty four years later the album finally surfaced on a retrospective collection of their work, and although the synth-pop genre is now somewhat dated, the songs themselves are pretty good, and so it's definitely worth hearing if you have fond memories of Tears For Fears, Erasure, A-Ha or Soft Cell.  

Track listing

01 The Moment
02 Breaking The Boundary
03 Blue Emotion
04 Embers
05 No More Proud
06 Photography
07 Splurge
08 Secrets
09 Aqua Vitae
10 In The Heat Of The Night
11 Solitary Lovers