A Kiss In The Dreamhouse (RSD 23)

As part of Record Store Day 2023 Universal Music Recordings are releasing the fifth Siouxsie and the Banshees studio album – A Kiss In The Dreamhouse pressed on 180g clear and gold marbled vinyl, mastered and cut half speed vinyl at Abbey Road Studios.

This unique edition’s artwork has been overseen by Siouxsie and Severin and boasts updated features and additional elements to celebrate forty years of this compelling, luminescent and influential recording.

Their 1981 LP ‘Juju’ had started a new era of the Siouxsie and the Banshees and after an extensive year of touring and the release of a non LP single “Fireworks” they entered Camden’s Playground Studios to record their new album with a now tried and fully tested line up. The resulting ‘A Kiss In The Dreamhouse’ was released on 5th of November 1982.

Pre-dating the subject matter of 1997’s ‘L.A Confidential’, the title ‘A Kiss in the Dreamhouse’ refers to a notorious Hollywood lookalike brothel. Siouxsie described their self produced album at the time as “Opiated visions, sonic pyramids, all seeing eyes, dreamlike soundscapes” their love of psychedelia now given centre stage as strings play backwards on ‘Circle’, the music shimmers through ‘Cascade’ and ‘Painted Bird’ and haunts on “Obsession” all capped off by ‘Slowdive’ a closing track of experimental sleaze tinted with violins, cellos and catchy melodic hooks.

The album received unanimous praise on its release. NME’s Richard Cook considered it innovative: “A Kiss in the Dreamhouse is a feat of imagination scarcely ever recorded. It’s breath-taking. Somehow, a bold assurance of intention has met with a hunger for experimenting with sound to expand an already formidable group of songs into pure, open-minded ambiguity. The flesh of the song will balloon out or contort into unimaginable patterns; indecipherable echoes volley between the walls of the recording; glassy, splintered tones pierce the luxuriant sheen of the mix. Repeated listens trick the sense of balance; tremendous risks are taken. “I promise. This music will take your breath away”. Another journalist of the NME Paul Du Noyer wrote that A Kiss in the Dreamhouse was “a real departure from rock tradition” and “maybe even their best.”

1982 A Kiss In The Dreamhouse – Siouxsie and the Banshees were Siouxsie Sioux on vocals, Steven Severin on Bass Guitar, John McGeoch on Guitar and Keys, Budgie on Drums.

Although forming on a punky whim in 1976 the Banshees remain one of the most influential and enigmatic bands of our time, worlds apart from their contemporaries and a cut above the rest. Unapologetically singular, confrontational, ever evolving yet all encompassing. The Banshees are as important now and even more so than they have ever been and continue to influence future generations by introducing their music and imagery through such hits as ‘Stranger Things’, Stephen Kings ‘IT’ and Edgar Wrights ‘Last Night in Soho’.