Five x Slo-mo Ro, solo

RóISÍN MURPHY, the absolute Queen of Everything, first came to the attention of the more discerning music lovers of the UK in the early 90s, working with Mark Brydon in a strange electronic-soul duo from Sheffield.

They were named after the Russian word for milk – Moloko – cribbed from the wholesome drug-in-a-drink in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange.

For me, Moloko’s music was notable for its top-quality tunes, its genre-bending, hugely likeable and unrelenting oddness, and Róisín Murphy’s engaging, acrobatic and occasionally breath-taking vocals  – and her willingness to mangle these often achingly beautiful vocal performances into new and strange shapes.

She’d go from Karen Carpenter to Pinky & Perky to the girl from the Exorcist in the space of a few seconds. Moloko’s songs were bewildering and beguiling in equal measure.

And the lyrics – funny, daft/clever wordplay and tall tales of ego-maniac pharaohs, party weirdos and dirty monkeys, cheeky monkeys, all solemnly delivered by the Queen of Sass like this was the most serious shit in the world – were a cut above the contemporary club dreck of the era.

Under the influence: Fauxchisels

I FIRST ran into the amiable Black Country noiseniks Fauxchisels on the last date of Gad Whip’s short tour of England in October 2021, but they’ve actually been doing this for a decade in one way or another.

Seeing them at the Talleyrand that night, their music seemed to pull in different directions, with their seemingly unashamed trad rock leanings matched by a decidedly off-kilter, un-traditional willingness to experiment – although I suspect that at least two-thirds of the band would enthusiastically endorse the idea that 70s rock was wildly experimental and not remotely self-indulgent.

Not a point of view I come across often, to be honest, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong.

Mark & Farrar

“WE STARTED DJing about a year and a half ago at this really dodgy nightclub in Keighley called Vicky’s .. We didn’t really know what we were doing but, you know, it didn’t seem to matter. There were loads of people trekking over from Leeds and everyone got right into it and had a good time. We were playing the right tunes”.

Mark Alexander and Steve Farrar are still playing the right tunes in a DJing career that has seen them leave the grim, rural wilds of West Yorkshire to return to their home town, the bright and bustling metropolis that is Leeds.

“We were playing the same stuff as we do now,” says Mark. “Garage, techno, Belgian stuff, mostly techno from America. The charts are for popular music, which is fair enough, but we’re not into playing that kind of thing. We want to keep it underground, keep it hardcore”.

Loudhailer Songs by A Witness (Ron Johnson Records)

ENERGISED by my time in the cultural hothouse that was Darlington in 1984/85, I returned to Scunthorpe determined to give the town’s music scene the kick up the arse it so richly deserved.

I signed on the dole immediately.

Decadent Few

I THOUGHT I was quite enlightened in 1984 but apparently not. This ‘vintage’ postal interview is from the pages of Fun & Games, which was very much a one-off zine I did when I moved to Darlington for a year.

Anyone for a leading question? Can I interest you in a chauvinist worldview then? And the less said about Gary the bassist, the better. To their credit, the band gave him the boot when he went off the deep end.

Not my best work – some of Mick’s answers demand follow-up questions, to say the least – but it’s an interesting take on the mid 80s UK anarcho scene, if nothing else. Don’t judge me.

***

I’m picking up bad vibrations

SOCIAL distancing is easy. I’ve been doing it for years. It was record shops being closed that very nearly did me in. That and having no money whatsoever.

Yes. I’m aware that most other people have had much more important things to worry about during lockdown, thanks.

Five x Mark E Smith

SOMETIMES I think the world is simply too weird without Mark E Smith. Other times, I think it’s not weird enough.

Either way, I miss him. I wish he was still around to enlighten us with his opinion on the hole we find ourselves in today. I wish we had a new Fall album to look forward to rather than an unstoppable stream of reissues of varying quality and morality.

And I wish I could go and see the Fall one last time and wonder what version of MES we’ll be getting tonight, knowing full well it’ll either be very good or very bad but it’ll never be indifferent.

Luckily, the body of work he left behind bears repeated listening. Obviously.

Overpowered by Róisín Murphy (EMI)

MY WORK is done. Ever since I was introduced to Moloko’s debut album by a girlfriend in Leeds in the mid 90s, I’ve been diligent in returning the favour to womankind by turning a succession of lucky, lucky ladies onto the unparalleled genius of Róisín Murphy.

No, not at all, you are very welcome.

Despite her undoubted star quality, and since this is all about me, I think this perhaps has more to do with Róisín being the vocal-led stuff that I play at home the most that isn’t offensive, abrasive or otherwise objectionable. These perhaps-not-quite-so-lucky ladies were essentially clutching at musical straws.

I’m joking. Who wouldn’t like Róisín’s stuff, once you’ve actually heard it?

Under the influence: Art of Flying

I’M VERY MUCH INTO the idea that the journey is every bit as important as the destination – and it’s usually more interesting. Who really knows where we’re going to end up? 

And certainty is over-rated anyway. Change is constant. We should embrace it. Dealing with the mad, random shit that life throws at us is what makes us who we are.

David Costanza, who works with Anne Speroni as Art of Flying, probably didn’t ever envisage he’d be following in the footsteps of David Bowie, Roxy Music and Bob Marley by playing in south Manchester’s most rock n roll suburb, Stretford, but that is precisely what is happening to him this month when he appears at Reel Around the Fountain, Stretford Arndale’s finest (and only) secondhand record emporium.  

And not the fair-weather kind

AS NAKED tribal loyalties come to the fore across Europe once again, here in the UK we need all the mates we can get. We need to make new friends, yes, but we also need to remember our existing chums.

Obviously, Trump can go fuck himself.

The trouble is, like many of my fellow Brits, I’m shit at this stuff. I’m rubbish at staying in touch. I don’t speak to people for years, and when I do, it’s usually because I want something. And new people I meet often get on my nerves.

As a result, I have a very small, tight circle of friends and it’s getting smaller and tighter each year as I somehow manage to alienate more people, or they end up going to prison or Wales, or just dying.

Good, another name to cross out of the phone book and fewer opportunities for unnecessary stop n chats and Christmas card drama.

The funny thing is, now that I am tediously and entirely predictably middle aged, perpetually grumpy and distrustful of anything new and different, I’ve never been more in tune with the prevailing national mood of UK plc.