Siglo XX "View of the Weird" | PIAS

"Twentieth Century" is a literal translation of "Siglo XX" from Spanish. But "Siglo Iks Iks" or "Siglo Veinte" also terms an anarchist movement during the Spanish civil war...
Siglo XX was a tin mine in Bolivia. Along with the Catavi mine, it was part of a mining complex in the area. The mine was nationalized following the "Bolivian National Revolution" of 1952, when the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement and its allies overthrew the military junta. Siglo XX and other mines were placed under the control of a new state agency, the Corporación Minera de Bolivia. On June 24, 1967, government troops and a new military junta marched on the mine and committed the largest massacre of workers in Bolivian history. In 1987, as part of an economic restructuring deal with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the government shut down production at Siglo XX.
Well, what the hell was this historical excursus done for?..
The band members were from Genk, a depressed industrial city located in the Belgian province of Limburg. A peaceful village with a population of 2,000 by the begining of the twentieth century and the biggest city in Limburg, peaking to a population of 70 000 by the middle of the twentieth century, after a large quantity of coal was found there in 1901. In 1966 the coal pit of Zwartberg closed down and... by the end of the 1980s, the two remaining coal mines of Winterslag and Waterschei were also closed. 70 000 of unoccupied, beside these who managed to employ the Ford Motor Company factory... a painful present of poverty.
See the link?..

As Siglo XX, Antonio Palermo, Dirk Chauvaux, Erik Dries and Klaas Hoogerwaard started with their release of a single without a record company "The naked and the death" in 1980. The gloomy dark-new-wave sound of that 7" the group were to repeat all through the eighties. A sound that - much to their disgust - has been described by the critics as "cold wave".
"View Of The Weird" is a 12'' EP (EP, I suppose), recorded and released 1987 on Play It Again Sam (PIAS). For tracking down, here is the quick access discography.

• The sleeve info:
BIAS 73
"View Of The Weird" Produced by Luc Tijtgat and Siglo XX
"Silent Crowd" Produced by Ludo Camberlin and Siglo XX
All songs and instruments by Siglo XX
Coverdesign by Tone Loenders
(All sleeves are usually embeded, you can see these in iTunes artwork section).

So called "cold wave".

↑ Download Siglo XX "View of the Weird" (20.5 Mb)