From Blue to Black

By Joel Lane

'Lane's prose delivers a vicious blow to our soft, nostalgic places; like finding a discarded gig flyer from years gone by, ripe and brimming with memory. Divine, acerbic and essential.'

– Matt Wesolowski, author of Demon

‘A poet of misfits, outsiders and the forsaken, his empathy for their suffering ever poignant.’

– Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual

Birmingham, early 1990s. Triangle are a cult act on the post-punk scene, led by brilliant and troubled vocalist Karl – a man haunted by past violence and present danger, torn between fame and oblivion, men and women, music and silence.

Triangle’s bass player, David, is struggling to make sense of Karl’s reality as the band start to make waves in the music scene and Karl starts to come apart in a blur of sex and drinking.

First published in 2000, Joel Lane’s debut novel From Blue to Black is a story of passion, blood and alcohol, broken strings and broken lives – a piercing voyage through our musical and political past that cuts to the bone.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY KERRY HADLEY-PRYCE

• Language: English
• Publisher: Influx Press
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781914391040

Joel Lane

Joel Lane was the author of two novels, From Blue to Black and The Blue Mask; several short story collections, The Earth Wire, The Lost District, The Terrible Changes, Do Not Pass Go, Where Furnaces Burn, The Anniversary of Never and Scar City; a novella, The Witnesses Are Gone; and four volumes of poetry, The Edge of the Screen, Trouble in the Heartland, The Autumn Myth and Instinct. He edited three anthologies of short stories, Birmingham Noir (with Steve Bishop), Beneath the Ground and Never Again (with Allyson Bird). He won an Eric Gregory Award, two British Fantasy Awards and a World Fantasy Award. Born in Exeter in 1963, he lived most of his life in Birmingham, where he died in 2013.

Reviews for From Blue to Black

[blakefraina · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

FROM BLUE TO BLACK tells of the rise of Triangle, a fictional power trio, making dark, dissonant rock music in 1990's Birmingham. It is also a love story of sorts. Karl, the group's haunted, alcoholic, bisexual lead singer/guitarist, and David, their new bass player become lovers the night they meet. Their doomed affair, and Karl's descent into addiction and mental illness, plays out against (and is expertly mirrored by) the bleak industrial landscape of Northern England. First time novelist Lane's background as a poet is clearly in evidence as the book is chock full of tangible, amazingly wrought imagery. Many of the descriptive passages can be taken as metaphors for Karl's troubled psyche - the black hopelessness hidden behind the opaque facade: "Beyond the terraced streets, we could see the backdrop of green hills. From a distance, the elaborate Victorian frontages of the factories and civic halls looked impressive; but close-up you could see the sprayed messages and the chicken-wire over the blackened glass." A river on the outskirts of Karl's home town, and the scene of his most terrible boyhood secret is, "...a skinned mass of dark muscle and yellow fat." Even a lover's idyll is tarnished with an ominous, disturbing air; when Karl and David dance together, it is, "...awkwardly, walled in by moving shadows." If a reader is not interested in rock music, particularly in the various dealings that constitute the day-to-day life of a working rock band, then he/she might find the book to be overly encumbered with minutiae. For me, Lane's detailed descriptions of the writing, production, arrangement, recording and performing of the songs was spot on. The song lyrics were always revealing and the "reviews" of Triangle's concerts and recordings brilliantly aped the pretentious UK rock press. While reading this book, I was constantly aware of the writer's lyrical skill with words, yet this only enhanced the emotional impact of the story, never distracted from it. This is a beautiful and carefully crafted work. Highly recommended to fans of music, queer literature or just great writing.

[mikefarquhar · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

From Blue to Black, Joel Lane's first novel, deals with Triangle, a British indie rock band in the early 90s, tracking their early rise from the clubs of Birmingham to fame of a sort, and then their eventual fall back down again. Triangle are Ian, the quiet drummer, Karl, the troubled front-man and writer, and new addition David, the calm narrator, brought in to provide some balance for Karl, and for a brief period, they flare in the music scene. The heart of the novel is the relationship between David and Karl, as Karl struggles to express his inner turmoil through his music, but starts to spiral downwards despite David's influence.Lane writes with a distinct ring of truth - he makes the details feel right, from the squalid clubs the band starts out in, to their one tour, to the snidely qualified reviews they get in the music press - that flesh out his plot without becoming the focus of it. That plot owes more than a slight debt to Richey Edwards and the Manics, though Lane gives his story a degree more closure than real life has done for Edwards, and its here that its odd quasi-documentary style is perhaps both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness.