The Stranglers were in trouble. The British rock band had recorded an entire album's worth of material in Brussels, and Epic Records had rejected it. The label disliked the production so much that it demanded a new producer before the record could be finished. On November 5, 1984, the result of that forced rethink finally appeared: Aural Sculpture, the group's eighth studio album.
Epic rejects the Brussels demos
The problem started with the demos. Epic rejected the band's first versions of the tracks, and the criticism did not stop there. Singer and guitarist Hugh Cornwell agreed with the label, and he was particularly unhappy with the sound of the guitars and vocals on the tapes. The Stranglers had already spent three weeks at ICP Recording Studios in Brussels in February and March 1984, but most of that work would never make the final album.
The label insisted on bringing in an outside producer. The candidate list included Marvin Gaye and Eddie Grant, but the job went to Laurie Latham. The band's keyboard player Dave Greenfield travelled to Brussels with Latham for a trial session, and Latham was given one track to prove himself: 'Skin Deep'. The song clicked, and The Stranglers agreed to record the whole album with him.
A brass trio joins the sessions
Latham's big idea was to bring in a brass trio made up of trumpet, trombone and saxophone. It was a radical shift for a band known for its gritty, keyboard-driven sound, but the producer pushed for it. A brass trio was flown into Brussels and laid down its parts on 'Ice Queen', 'Punch and Judy' and 'Mad Hatter' during one marathon session that started late at night and ran until the next afternoon.
The album was effectively rebuilt. Only four songs from the first Brussels session made the final cut: 'Skin Deep', 'North Winds', 'Punch and Judy' and 'Souls'. Most of Aural Sculpture came from newer tracks recorded with Latham during a second session in June and July 1984. The band's bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel later described the record as a labour of love for Latham and Cornwell, while he and Greenfield felt almost like supporting players.
The new sound worked. Aural Sculpture reached number 14 on the UK Albums Chart in November 1984, and it produced three singles: 'Skin Deep', 'No Mercy' and 'Let Me Down Easy'. The first of those had already climbed to number 15 on the UK Singles Chart. The album's visual identity matched its title: in February 1984 the band held a six-hour photo session in Trafalgar Square with a 13-foot sculpture of an ear made by artist John King, and the resulting shots became the album cover. The singles were not the only way to hear the album. All three were also pressed as 12-inch versions, and 'No Mercy' received an extra picture disc and an EP. The cassette edition went further, hiding a text adventure called Aural Quest for the ZX Spectrum at the end of the tape, with a short spoken introduction by Dave Greenfield.
Aural Sculpture never became the band's most famous record, but it marked a clean break. The Stranglers had been pushed into a corner by their label, and instead of fighting the demand for a new producer, they let Latham reshape their sound around acoustic guitar and brass. The album that came out on November 5, 1984 was not the one they had started making, but it was the one that saved the project. The album has kept returning in new editions. In 2011, the Dutch vinyl label Music On Vinyl released a remastered two-disc version with ten bonus tracks, and in 2019 the band issued a hand-numbered two-disc vinyl set for the album's 35th anniversary, limited to 1,000 copies.