Album dossier / 1980

Seventeen Seconds

The Cure · Post-Punk/Gothic Rock

Seventeen Seconds marked Robert Smith's debut as co-producer, working with engineer Mike Hedges at Morgan Studios in London in early 1980 with a mostly new lineup -- bassist Simon Gallup and keyboardist Matthieu Hartley joined Smith and Lol Tolhurst for a configuration that lasted barely a year. Hedges built the record's stark, cavernous sound using newly available C-ducer contact mics on every drum, isolating each hit with almost no natural ambience, then rebuilt space artificially with reverb and delay to create the album's chilly atmosphere. Closing single "A Forest" -- the most heavily overdubbed track on the record -- became the template for the band's goth-rock signature sound, and Smith has called Seventeen Seconds the first album that "I felt was really The Cure."