Julian Cope - Black Sheep (2008) 2CD

BLACK SHEEP is Julian Cope’s new album for 2008CE, and is a musical exploration of what it is to be an outsider in modern Western Culture. Across 11 songs and one epic poem, Cope examines the idea of social outcasts and how they — through their sheer obstinacy and strength of personality — carve a path for themselves in the normal world, often changing society’s own concepts of normality in the process. On BLACK SHEEP, Cope attributes his personal descent into outsider-dom to his 9th birthday on which 116 children his own age died in the infamous Aberfan Disaster. Cope also asserts that the West has been rigorously directed towards the outsider concept, first by the rejected ‘Black Sheep’ prophet Jesus Christ, whose own people ignored his revelation, and secondly by St. Paul, another ‘Black Sheep’ whose singular take on Christianity has come down to us through the Roman Empire. Available on two half-hour-long CDs and later on gatefold double-vinyl, the 11 songs of BLACK SHEEP reveal Cope at a pinnacle of songwriting and feature sumptuous lashings of orchestral Mellotron, orchestral percussion and marching bass drums, plus oboe, wah guitar, rumbling synthesizers and gorgeous harmony vocals.