Chorus (Erasure album)

Chorus, Erasure's fifth proper studio album, was released by Mute Records in the UK and Sire Records in the U.S. in 1991 (see 1991 in music); and on the short list of nominees for the 1992 Mercury Prize. In 1999, Ned Raggett ranked the album at number 45 in his list of "The Top 136 or So Albums of the Nineties".

History

Upon its release, Chorus became Erasure's third consecutive number-one album in the UK and gave them four more top twenty hits. In the U.S., it was Erasure's highest-debuting and highest-peaking album on the Billboard 200 at the time, entering at #29. It gave Erasure their first Billboard Hot 100 entry since "Stop!" with the title track, which also charted well on the Modern Rock Tracks chart and Billboard's Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. Chorus also charted well in Germany, where it peaked at number thirteen.

Production

Prior to the album's production, programmer Vince Clarke had noticed technical limitations of the by-then-predominant MIDI sequencing standard, notably that the protocol's low signal rate resulted in timing errors (known as "MIDI slop") when multiple notes were triggered simultaneously. In an effort to eliminate this and give the album a "tighter" feel, he avoided the use of MIDI completely, using primarily analog synthesizers and the Roland MC-4 CV/gate sequencer. The avoidance of MIDI had other side effects on the sound of the album, such as the lack of chorded voices (the MC4 can only trigger one note at a time per instrument) and digital synthesizers and samplers, due to lack of CV/gate interfaces on available models. Clarke would continue with this production technique for later recordings through the 90s.

Chorus

Chorus may refer to:

Music

Other entertainment

Chorus effect

In music, a chorus effect (sometimes chorusing or chorused effect) occurs when individual sounds with approximately the same timbre, and very similar pitch converge and are perceived as one. While similar sounds coming from multiple sources can occur naturally, as in the case of a choir or string orchestra, it can also be simulated using an electronic effects unit or signal processing device.

Methods

When the effect is produced successfully, none of the constituent sounds are perceived as being out of tune. It is characteristic of sounds with a rich, shimmering quality that would be absent if the sound came from a single source. The effect is more apparent when listening to sounds that sustain for longer periods of time.

The chorus effect is especially easy to hear when listening to a choir or string ensemble. A choir has multiple people singing each part (alto, tenor, etc.). A string ensemble has multiple violinists and possibly multiples of other stringed instruments.

In spite of the name, most electronic chorus effects do not accurately emulate this acoustic ensemble effect. Instead, they create a constantly moving electronic shimmer.

Chorus (Eberhard Weber album)

Chorus is an album by German double bassist and composer Eberhard Weber featuring Jan Garbarek and Ralf-R. Hübner recorded in 1984 and released on the ECM label.

Track listing

All compositions by Eberhard Weber

Personnel

References

Erasure

Erasure (/ᵻˈreɪʒər/) are an English synthpop duo, consisting of singer and songwriter Andy Bell and songwriter and keyboardist Vince Clarke. They formed in London, and entered the music scene in 1985 with their debut single "Who Needs Love Like That". Following the release of their fourth single "Sometimes", the duo established itself on the UK Singles Chart and became one of the most successful artists of the late 1980s to mid-1990s.

From 1986 to 2007, Erasure achieved 24 consecutive Top 40 hits in the UK, while having three Top 20 hits in the US (on the Billboard Hot 100): "A Little Respect", "Chains of Love", and "Always". By 2009, 34 of their 45 singles and EPs (of which 8 out of the 45 were not chart eligible in the UK) had made the UK Top 40, with 17 climbing into the Top 10. At the 1989 Brit Awards, Erasure won the Brit Award for Best British Group.

The duo are most popular in their native UK and mainland Europe (especially Germany, Denmark and Sweden) and also in South America (especially Argentina, Chile and Peru). To date, they have sold over 25 million albums worldwide. The band is also popular within the LGBT community, for whom openly gay Bell has become a gay icon.

Erasure (heraldry)

Erasure in blazonry, the language of heraldry, is the tearing off of part of a charge, leaving a jagged edge of it remaining. Due to the usual construction of blazons, this is most often found in its adjectival form (i.e., erased), usually applied to animate charges, most often used of heads but sometimes other body parts. When a tree or other plant is shown uprooted (with the bare roots showing), it is eradicated.

The term erased is most often used of an animal's head, when the neck is depicted with a ragged edge as if forcibly torn from the body. Erased heads are distinct from those couped, in that the former are cut off along a jagged line while the latter are cut off along a straight line.

John Craig's dictionary of 1854 says:

Forms of erasure

There are different traditions for the erasing of heads. For instance, with the head of a bear, whether couped or erased, in English heraldry the separation is done horizontally under the neck, which is not lost, whereas in Scottish heraldry the usual practice is for the head to be separated from the body vertically, without keeping the neck attached to it.

Erasure (novel)

Erasure is a 2001 novel by Percival Everett and originally published by UPNE. The novel reacts against the dominant strains of discussion surrounding the publication and criticism of African American literature.

Plot

The novel's plot revolves around how the publishing industry pigeon-holes African-American writers. The protagonist, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a professor of English literature, is repeatedly criticized for not writing "black enough". Ellison is angered by the success of an Oprah-like book club's selection of a novel reflecting what is supposedly contemporary black experience, but which presents a stereotypical story. He composes a satirical response based on Richard Wright's Native Son and Sapphire's novel Push, which he first entitles My Pafology before changing it to Fuck. The talk show host, a Hollywood producer, and a panel of famous novelists, all prove more willing to accept the brutal, dehumanized black man of the novel than a middle-class intellectual like Ellison. He in turn has trouble facing impoverished blacks both real and fictional.