Boom times

Apparently, The Boom Boom Bap is "single of the decade, by a country mile" in this week's Time Out. It'll still sell bugger all, but perhaps it's for the best, as Green seems to dislike the attention anyway. If you want to buy it and risk sending him back to his spare bedroom, it comes out next Monday.

Buy it here!

Scritti Politti tour dates (Man, I never thought I'd get to write those words...)

Bob's your...er...

Despite having the seventh worst band name in musical history*, Grandadbob, who were brought to my attention this week, are quite special and deserving of your hard-earned wodge in the next few months. To my shame, their first album Waltzes For Weirdos passed me by completely, and their second, Garden of Happiness, is due in the shops sometime over the summer. Trawling the web to find out a little more about them, I discover that they're a duo from Sheffield, that they are plying their trade at various festivals this summer, and that they're signed to Norman Cook's Southern Fried label.

Their brand of pastoral electronica will probably be popular with anyone who likes, oooh, let's say Air, Beth Orton, or Zero 7. But I particularly like the track that I'm linking to below. Called Glow In The Dark, it sounds like nothing so much as the Flaming Lips if they roped in William Orbit for production duties. Fantastic, in other words. If this isn't enough to persuade you, the new album also features the legendary Brian Blessed giving it large at the start of the title track. Even more endearingly, the Shakespearian colossus and full-time mentalist apparently agreed to lend his stentorian vocal chords for a token fee and a jar of marrow chutney, the recipe for which is printed on the CD inlay. And when was the last time that the Kaiser Chiefs let you see their chutney recipes, eh?

Download Glow in The Dark (deleted Feb 2007--sorry!)

More Grandadbob info

Buy their CDs and vinyl here

* The six that are worse, in case you were wondering, are Kajagoogoo, Lovespitlove, Gnarls Barkley, Crispy Ambulance, Hoobastank and Oingo Boingo.

Well Red

Not sure when exactly Mick Hucknall and Simply Red became a by-word for naffness, and I'm really not sure it's totally deserved, either. Sure, Mick doesn't do himself any favours with his OTT dress sense, his habit of propositioning naive young ladies in the toilets of the Hacienda ("just slip yer tights off, luv"), the authoritarian streak that led to his band being summarily fired, the excruciating cover versions...and yet...

The case for the defence:

• their cover of Bunny Wailer's "Love Fire", and its remix by Lee Perry;
  
• Chris Joyce and Tony Bowers being the original Durutti Column, before leaving Vini Reilly to form The Mothmen, and subsequently hooking up with Mick and co.
• Simply Red's Tim Kellett later playing with The self-same Durutti Column
• Adrian Sherwood saying that Mick Hucknall was the best voice he'd ever worked with;
• Blood and Fire Records (of which Hucknall is co-owner).

In fact just for the fact that he's the money behind Blood and Fire I'm prepared to forgive him. This peerless reissue label, run by Steve Barrow and Bob Harding, is comaprable to Blue Note in its quality control and attention to detail. Its graphic sense is unmatched in the genre (not difficult really when you look at some of the Letrasetted dreck that comes out of Jamaica), and the emphasis on sonic fidelity is equally rare in the field. Notable successes include reissues of The Congos' Heart Of The Congos and Horace Andy's In The Light; both include numerous dub versions, and Heart of The Congos manages to squeeze pretty much all of the Congos' Black Ark output onto 2 CDs. In their ongoing quest to provide VFM for discerning reggae fanatics, the label has recently dropped the price of many of its CDs to about a fiver, so there's really little excuse for not owning Train To Zion by U-Brown or Tapper Zukie in Dub.

Provided below are a couple of tasters: King Tubby's In Fine Style from Dub Gone 2 Crazy, and Jah Hucknall himself in a Blood and Fire remix of the execrable Ghetto Girl.

King Tubby's In Fine Style (deleted Feb 2007--sorry!)

Simply Red Ghetto Girl- Blood and Fire remix (deleted Feb 2007--sorry!)

Buy Blood and Fire Cds

Scott of the Anarchic

Annoyingly, my filesharing service is undergoing some restructuring at the moment, and files of more than 2MB can't be uploaded. Grrrr. However, I haven't been completely wasting my time recently. No, I haven't got around to regrouting the bathroom. Instead, I've been whiling away many a hapy hour at YouTube, along with millions of other sleep-deprived netizens (some 6 million within only 5 months, according to this report).

Pick of the bunch so far, and quite timely given the current adulation given to The Drift, has to be this Scott Walker appearance from The Tube from 1986. Scott gamely answers questions before introducing his then-current single from Climate Of Hunter (Virgin's worst selling album ever, by all accounts). Muriel Gray, who's usually pretty reliable, seems not to have done her homework, and appears unaware that the former Mr. Engel had any sort of career between 1968 and 1986.

Climate must be the one of the few records to feature both Billy Ocean and Mark Knopfler among its alumni; curious, too, that he rejected Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois as album producers, according to this interview in The Wire.

One other thing: he's quite similar to GG, below; a former pin-up who wants to distance himself from his past, painted as a recluse by the press (though Scott's been busy producing Pulp and scoring movie soundtracks, while Green's been working with Kylie Minogue and single-handedly keeping the pubs of North and East London profitable), given to long absences from the music biz, always feted in the pages of the music press and the broadsheets on his return, and usually selling naff all. Never mind, eh. Roll on 2013, which is probably the earliest point at which we can expect any new product from either of them.

Buy The Drift.

More Scott here.

They're baaack!

Or rather, he's back. With only their fifth album in 28 years, Scritti Politti make Kraftwerk seem like workaholics. But never mind the quantity, feel the quality; most groups are lucky to make one masterpiece in their lives, while Green Gartside (for it is he) has managed three thus far (Songs To Remember, Cupid and Psyche 85 and Anomie & Bonhomie: we'll overlook Provision, his third album), and White Bread, Black Beer, to be released in early June, looks like it might shape up to be another, judging by the two tracks I've heard so far. Hell, even Simon Reynolds is in a froth.

Equally exciting is the news that Green has been playing live recently, breaking a 26 year duck that stemmed from an onstage panic attack in 1980. First Jandek, now Green Gartside...presumably the odds are now shortened on the Syd Barrett 2007 world tour...

Apparently, this is a back-to-basics effort, and appropriately enough, it's going to be released by Rough Trade, Scritti's original label. 2006 finds Green (now pushing 50 and recently married) in a very upbeat and positive frame of mind; would another album before 2010 be totally out of the question? The single, The Boom Boom Bap is out in mid-June, but you can stream it here.



Buy White Bread Black Beer.

Bibbly-O-Tek blog.

RIP Grant McLennan

The Go-Between's frontman funeral is tomorrow.

Shack attack

Saw ACR last weekend at the Triptych, and a very good thing they were too, even 28 years after their debut. Though they always seemed to be operating in Joy Division's (and later New Order's) shadow, at least while they were on Factory, anyone who looked beyond the superficial similarities saw that they were their own group, not copyists. In fact, if anything, it was New Order who were often shadowing A Certain Ratio. The latter flirted with the dancefloor while New Order were still continuing Joy Division's legacy in 1981; ACR released the stunning electro epic Waterline a full year before Blue Monday; ACR saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship to a major four years before New Order were forced to do the same. But, as someone else said in another context, it's no good being ahead of your time. You've got to be on time. And so ACR were always the bridesmaid, but never the bride.

Like most aficionados, I dig their "James Brown in a morgue" era (c. 1979-82) the most, but unlike some others I don't dismiss their post-Simon Topping output. Force and Good Together are terrific albums, and both ACR:MCR and Up In Downsville have their moments. Their major label sojourn ended after the expected hits failed to materialise, though the group wisely managed to build a studio with the advance they got. Before they were dropped, though, A&M had plans to release a Norman Cook remake of Shack Up (deleted Feb 2007), arguably their best-known Fac-era work. It never made it past the white label stage, but Irk The Purists is proud to present it for your delectation here. Scratchy vinyl clicks are essential.

Buy ACR CDs.

Buy more ACR CDs.