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.

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.

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.

Reality Asylum revisited

ONCE upon a time, Crass had been all but erased from history.

They were at the epicentre of a genuine nationwide cultural phenomenon that changed thousands of lives profoundly and yet, a few years after they had ceased working as a band, where anyone took any notice of them at all, they were reduced to a mere footnote in the tawdry tale of corporate rock n roll.

That wasn’t good enough. Erase Crass and you also erase the experience of thousands of people like me, as if what we experienced had no value or validity.

It offended my sense of decency. I wasn’t having it. There are plenty of things in the world to get upset about, but righting this particular wrong was part of the reason why I started writing this blog in the first place.

And now? Everyone seems to be going on about Crass these days. Coincidence?

Five x Sergio Mendes

IT’S DIFFICULT to know where to start with Sergio Mendes.

The veteran Brazilian pianist and arranger has released around 50 albums since he made his name freestyling bossa nova tunes with the cream of Copacabana’s jazz and samba players in tiny after-hours dives in the late Fifties and early Sixties.

As John Peel once said:

“A lot of people write to me and say: ‘I heard Sergio Mendes, which record should I get?’ And I never have any hesitation in telling them, you must get them all. Apart from the one he did with will.i.am.”

Under the influence: Girls in Synthesis

“THERE is no time for sentimental nostalgia .. we might not make tomorrow,” say Girls in Synthesis on their last single, and you can’t help thinking that they might have a point.

This is a band who sincerely believe in just battering the shit out of their instruments and, by extension, any audience lucky enough to be in their vicinity at the time. In many ways, this is the only rational response to a world that currently seems to be on as long, extended, slow-mo nosedive into a cesspit of lies, hatred and bullshit of its own making.

Gad Whip Euro promo mix

IT’S a couple of days before I embark on a week of gigs as the actual tour DJ for my very good friends Gad Whip, promoting their Post-Internet Blues long playing-record around Germany and Switzerland, and I’m so excited I could spit.