Attack Of The Grey Lantern

Product Information

The album was preceded by four singles, the first of which "Egg Shaped Fred" was released a year prior. Wide Open Space" became a dance anthem after being remixed by DJ and producer Paul Oakenfold under the production alias Perfecto.

After we added the strings to the beginning of the track it started to sound like a James Bond theme, so we changed its title to something slightly more humorous. I wouldn't have a cape, but there are definitely characters on the record – Albert Taxloss, Chad, Dark Mavis. This remix was included on Oakenfold's compilation Resident: Two Years of Oakenfold at Cream, as an indicator of being one of the most played songs at major UK nightclub Cream, as well as in nightclubs around the world, over the 1997–1999 period. This special 21st anniversary vinyl edition comes as two LPs in gatefold packaging featuring the iconic 'roses' cover art. I was 15 when I wrote it as I recollect and kept it tucked away and always thought it would make a nice album track, and it did.The next day I came back and Ronnie Stone, our engineer / producer said to me the verse vocal was weak so I re-recorded it and that was the only change from the track that was completed in a day.

Back in the high days of Britpop, Mansun released an album that sat askew from the pervading happy-go-lucky spirit of the times.Again, ploughing the religious imagery on this track, this song wasn’t immediately a huge hit but seems to be remembered along with ‘Taxloss’ as the most well-known on the album. The title was elongated as it seemed to earnest and this whole track was the most long winded and complicated to finish on the album. Created in May 2008 to provide a home for the growing post-progressive genre and an evolving, flexible and adventurous style of music without boundaries.

Throughout the album, the hero encounters a number of immoral inhabitants in a fictional English village. We recorded a 32 piece orchestra on this track which we didn’t even use in the end, such was the avarice of the era, you can hear the recording on the outtakes disc. I remember being slightly off my tits in Ibiza when Paul Oakenfold’s remix came on in Pacha and it blew me away. The amount of times I’ve sat in pubs trying to explain to people what ‘Stripper Vicar’ is all about is mind boggling, and in the mists of time, I’m not sure I can even remember myself. We originally recorded this song with a hip hop groove and some exceptional swearing that was rejected by the record company, these versions appear on the outtakes disc of the box set and its really interesting to hear these early versions and how we finally arrived at the finished version of this song that closed the album.It was complex to work out how to piece all this together, like a jigsaw, but great fun, the mastering engineer didn’t think so though. Written in the form of a letter from the transvestite vicar to his daughter, it sort of deepens the plot of the album’s narrative a bit before it’s all resolved on the final track, Dark Mavis. It doesn’t make sense in this era of streaming and the resurgence of vinyl, however the idea of this track is to reinforce the idea that the album was a skit of a conceptual record, not in fact one itself, which is obviously a paradox, which my younger self would have thought hilarious. Mansun are regarded as one of the most innovative British bands of the late 1990s and released three classic albums - Attack Of The Grey Lantern (1997), Six (1998), Little Kix (2000) - a retrospective compilation Kleptomania and a popular series of EPs during its existence. A bizarre pseudo rap about a transvestite vicar who cross dresses like his daughter, it seemed a good idea at the time and slightly subversive but seems a little tame by today’s standards where such things are pretty run of the mill.