Journey through the music of a generation in one of the UK’s most vibrant and creative cities… Dreams To Fill The Vacuum – The Sound Of Sheffield (1978-1988) – 4CD Bookpack! Sheffield in the 1970s…. a city in decline, its steel mills and factories closing and its vast housing estates beginning to crumble. Even the city’s two football teams were both experiencing the worst form in their long histories. An unlikely setting, then, for a musical revolution, but aren’t they always? As it transpired, in the aftermath of punk this industrial backdrop, alive with frustrated young talent and peppered with accessible and affordable rehearsal and performance spaces, became a hotbed of uniquely informed new bands that challenged both the constraints of genre and the dominance of music from London, Liverpool and Manchester. Dreams To Fill The Vacuum charts the revival of Sheffield and its music in the latter half of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, from The Human League to Pulp, via Aardvark, Pax and Native Records, and onto the chart successes of Heaven 17, ABC, Thompson Twins and many others. Featuring cornerstone contributions from the city’s brightest stars – Oakey, Cocker, Ware, Marsh, Hawley, Newton and co – alongside many more lesser-known legends, this is a tale of a city and its people rediscovering itself. Packed with first-hand artist sleevenotes, insightful essays, revealing imagery and brilliant, essential music, Dreams To Fill The Vacuum offers a story in need of telling.
