(Alternative Rock) Blood Red Shoes - Box Of Secrets - 2008, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Consisting of Steven Ansell (originally from Horsham, West Sussex) and Laura-Mary Carter (originally from Ashford, Surrey), they formed in 2005 after their previous bands (Cat On Form and Lady Muck respectively) had broken up and they decided to "have a jam". Blood Red Shoes is a musical democracy in which both members have equal say and control over the music and activities of the band. They have performed over 400 live shows and released eight singles since they began in 2005. They were signed to V2 in April 2007 with whom they released the singles "It's Getting Boring By The Sea" (June 11, 2007) and "I Wish I Was Someone Better" (October 29, 2007). However, following the sale of V2 to Universal Music Group, the band's debut album Box of Secrets was released on Mercury Records on 14 April 2008. It was leaked to private torrent trackers in November 2007, several months before its retail release date. The band have commented that although they have no issue with file sharing and downloading free music, having their debut album become available outside of their control and without the intended artwork and lyric booklet was a disappointment.
In an interview in Berlin, Laura-Mary explained that the band's name was taken from a Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire musical, in which Ginger Rogers had turned a pair of white dancing shoes red with blood because she had been practising dancing so much in them.
The band featured on both days of the 2007 Camden Crawl, playing the Purple Turtle and the Earl of Camden respectively. Blood Red Shoes headlined the 2007 Red Stripe Music Awards alongside Yourcodenameis:Milo. They were also one of four bands to play the NME New Music Tour 2007, with The Little Ones, Pull Tiger Tail and The Rumble Strips. The summer of 2007 saw the band playing several festival spots, including T in the Park, the inaugural Underage Festival, Electric Gardens festival and a highly successful slot at Reading Festival. They have also supported a wide range of bands, such as Q and Not U, Panic At The Disco, The Young Knives, Lightning Bolt, !!!, Biffy Clyro, Maximo Park, The Gossip, Siouxie Sioux and Rage Against the Machine. Most Recently, at Glastonbury 2008 they stepped in to perform in the place of The Long Blondes.
The band cite a large swathe of US-based underground punk and rock music as their primary influence, drawing inspiration from Babes in Toyland, Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, Q and not U, Pixies, Fugazi, Sonic Youth et al, although they also regularly highlight English artists Blur and PJ Harvey as music heroes. The band frequently distance themselves from current English guitar music and consider themselves to be a punk band, in ethos and attitude, if not in their immediate musical style. Blood Red Shoes deal with themes of frustration, anger, alienation, boredom, confusion and ultimately the hope of freedom, in their lyrics. They frequently refer to the fact that, like the music, their lyrics come from improvisation and are drawn from unconscious ideas rather than being consciously constructed. The band openly support anti-fascist campaigns such as Love Music Hate Racism, and have played the feminist festival Ladyfest in the past.
The band are known for retaining a high level of both creative control, and control over their business dealings - Laura-Mary designs all of the sleeve art, posters and merchandising (having previously studied art), and they ensure that ticket prices are kept low, merchandise is made on non-sweatshop fabrics and sold at a fair price, often much lower than their contemporaries. The band co-produced their album and are frequently the sole engineers and producers on their b-sides as well as on the early vinyl-only releases.
On Friday 11 April they smashed the 'cheese board' feature record on Gonzo with Zane Lowe by naming twenty cheeses in 20 seconds. Making the feat even more impressive was that the duo did not even say the most common cheese; cheddar.
After their autumn tour of 2008, the band took a performance stop in the first months of 2009 to write songs for their next record. They have now begun touring again, and are performing new songs at every gig, sometimes including unfinished songs or those without lyrics.

At first glance, Box of Secrets is a throbbing, exciting debut album from Brighton two piece Blood Red Shoes.
They have a powerful, stripped down sound - Laura-Mary Carter's siren like voice and Steve Ansell's insistent, nasal tones hover over a grinding guitar to produce 40 odd minutes of raw fatalism and fuck the world punk tinged rock. It doesn't matter where or when you listen to them, because it's always going to feel like pouring Red Stripe into your frontal lobes at 1am. And that always feels nice.
Lyrics are hammered like nails into your coffin - "Nothing CAN stop THIS creeping fear" moans Carter on You Bring Me Down. "Trying so hard to be listened to" they both shout, perhaps while ordering another drink.
After all that cheap lager - a few cigarettes as well, everyone's got to die some time - you'll be ready to jam yourself into the grimiest, indiest club you can find and drink tequila out of fluorescent plastic shot glasses. "I can't function in this dead end" she sings. Nothing for it but to hit the bottle, then.
But I do get excited (and drunk) quite easily. The truth is BRS aren't without their flaws. A bit like Red Stripe as well, in fact, their strength is also their biggest problem - a sound that starts out being exciting, vibrant and rebellious, ends up being repetitive, a touch self-indulgent even.
By the time you get to ADHD, or This Is Not For You, you're probably beginning to feel as if you've heard it all before - sobering up, perhaps, and maybe the hangover has started to kick in. If track one is visiting that dark, basement club on a Friday, then listening to the lot is like staying there until the following Tuesday. By which time, someone is bound to have put the lights on.
And where will they go next? Such simple debuts are at times impossibly difficult to follow up - they need to complicate the sound, go somewhere, not just a different club, but perhaps a different night out altogether. Or maybe they'll feel like staying in and watching a movie? Which would please no-one.
But - save all that talk about the future for the morning after. BRS may be simple, a touch on the repetitive side, and quite possibly bad for you. But they're also wonderfully exuberant, dark, grimy, fun. Don't take them too seriously - and enjoy them with a drink. It's probably what they'd want anyway.
Jon Bright

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008
EAC extraction logfile from 29. March 2009, 21:38
Blood Red Shoes / Box Of Secrets
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Read mode               : Secure
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Defeat audio cache      : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction                      : 102
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out          : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks   : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations       : Yes
Used interface                              : Installed external ASPI interface
Gap handling                                : Appended to previous track
Used output format              : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate                : 320 kBit/s
Quality                         : High
Add ID3 tag                     : No
Command line compressor         : C:\Program Files\FLAC\flac.exe
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TOC of the extracted CD
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       11  | 36:29.68 |  5:11.47 |    164243    |   187614
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