SINGLE OF
THE WEEK
DISCO INFERNO
SECOND
LANGUAGE EP (Rough Trade)
OH God, notes couldn’t spell out the score.
No band have robbed my speech and plundered my tears quite
as greedily as Disco Inferno have this year. And, in the current pop climate,
they grown more essential daily, a reason to believe rather than just another
band. So much British pop is living in now-fear: bands that talk about British
life from a rakish patronising distance of the “artist” and filter their “observations”
back through a haze of retro-retreat and sickening cowardice.
Disco Inferno are
beyond the poverty of such chicken-shits, they are the bravest band I’ve heard
in too long; they insist on rendition not representation, they create the sound
of living today there in your
headphones, pouring from your speakers, there is no distance, they are VIRTUAL
REALITY POP and they leave you gasping for air, clawing for words, shuddering
stunned in the overwhelming truth and beauty of the music surrounding you.
No other band can make you feel this scarily alive, this
acute sense of being on the brink of the big and wide. When the guitar at the
end of the title track starts to bend and warp, writing difficulties set in. My
heart skips a beat and then packs in two dozen in an instant. With this EP,
perhaps their most gorgeous and accessible yet, I’m praying that one of those
crazy moments when life actually works
is going to happen.
Tattoo it under yer eyelids and sleep knowing it, you’re letting
one of the best British bands of the decade slip through your fingers. There’s
now reward for being ahead of your time but, on paltry planet pop, there’s no
reward for being OF your time, either.
F***ing heroes, no question.
DAWN PENN
YOU DON’T LOVE ME (NO
NO NO) [Big Beat]
After that camel’s abortion
of a CJ Lewis single, it’d seem that the way to get a Number One is to find the
most teeth-itchingly irritating old novelty hit and get some conveyor-belt
toaster to Dalek out his drivel whenever the song runs out of words
(depressingly often). I await Shabba Ranks’ take on ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’
and Buju Banton’s cover of ‘It’s Raining Men’ with terror. Hopefully, this song’ll
hit big enough to banish all dire reggae-fied covers from the hit parade
forever.
This is as catchy
as crabs, with a vocal that’ll etch itself on yer mind all summer and a great
early 70s “Tighten Up Vol.4” feel that could make it the best female reggae hit
since the Soul Sisters “Wreck A Buddy”. A fab summer pop single and, oh yeah,
play it next to Luscious Jackson’s ‘Daughters Of The Kaos’ and pat yourself on
the back. Uncanny, aint it?
SHARA NELSON
NOBODY (Cooltempo)
YOU know this already, of course.
You’ve put it on
quiet at 3.30am to watch the rain run down the window and drag deep on your fag
and nod slowly. You’ve let it buzz your ears on the night bus home and let the
aching strings and sashay funk melt the tiredness and beer out yer head. You’ve
been sat in niteklubs surrounded by couples slopping over each other,
whispering to yourself, “I will not get alienated . . . I will not get alienated” and it’s come soaring
over the system and you’ve clung to yourself and felt the warm glow of lonely
happiness suffuse you.
You miserable old bugger.
Exquisitely measured defiance slips and slides into the
terror of loneliness and, as ever, it’s gratifying to hear someone sing about
life struggles who isn’t still a f***ing whiny adolescent or a solipsist sap or
any of those clichéd lovelorn characters pop is choked with – just a person
with all the attendant complexities, hang-ups and angelic neuroses that
entails.
This has five mixes that you really don’t need but still,
stack it up with “Hips & Makers”, “The White Birch” and Cassandra Wilsons incredible “Blue Light Til Dawn”, and
keep several cold ones in the fridge for me. I’ll be round later.
BARRY BLUE
CANCEL ‘EM ALL OUT
(Vinyl Solution)
FROM the label that have already sunk vast craters in yer
skull with Depthcharge, Eon and Gunshot comes more mind-bending future f***-cry
from debutee Barry Blue. “Cancel Em All Out” is a blistering indictment of the
music industry’s abject ignorance of British rap, and makes its best point
simply by sounding like a hand grenade dropped down Matty Hanson’s nappies and
a 100 times more powerful than any Snoop Lawdy Lawd drivel.
DJ White Child Rix masters the mayhem and is rapidly turning
into the John Woo of hip hop. His mixing here
is brutal and minimal, giving the mammoth beat a rawness that humps your
woofers like a rutting rhino that’s been chewing on its own horn. Missus.
Christ only know what they put in the water down at Vinyl Solution, so HE can
fix me up with a double.
FITS OF
GLOOM
HEAVEN (MCA)
You’ll hate it, inevitably. You’ll run out of cheap jeans
shops to avoid it. It will follow you everywere. Building sites, taxis, HMV,
kebab houses, passing Capris. In a pub, it’ll come on the juke and you’ll look
around accusingly. You’ll turn to your friends and say, “God, I HATE this song.”
You’ll make damn sure that everyone knows this kind of music is utterly
anti-thetical to everything you hold dear in pop. And you’ll sadly watch it
ascend the charts, wonder who is buying it, curse your generation.
And then when you’re
in the shower in the morning and Steve Wright plonks this on, you’ll be singing
your heart out, every single inane lyric, using the faucet as a microphone and
generally acting like you should be wearing a one-piece sequinned leather
body-stocking and playing “Pass The Mic” on ‘The Hitman And Her’ (still sadly
missed). The Shower Test is the ultimate critical criterion of great pop and
this passes it with barely a pause to reach for the loofah. You lav’ it, yoo
filfy caaah.
HUGE BABY
GOODNIGHT IRENE,
HELLO DOLLY (Org)
Y’KNOW how every now and then, when your faith in music is
waning, a record seems to come out of nowhere and show you a whole new infinity
of possibilities that need exploring? Happened with Public Enemy, Throwing
Muses, LFO, The Young Gods, Rhythim Is Rhythim. And now Huge Baby.
This band are most
intriguing. “Black Mama” turns from a Main-ish feedback wall into the dirtiest
scuzziest blues I’ve heard in years, before stopping, starting again and
finishing on a crescendo that even had the cat pinning her ears back. “Hopscotch”
is a terrifying Slint-ish lullaby that will send you to sleep clinging to the
sheets and bracing yourself for a restless night, and “Voodoo” is a cross
between Pram and AC Temple, featuring a most astonishing vocal performance.
Thinking the record was warped, I got up to take it off but
it wasn’t, she was doing that shit naturally! As I stepped back from the hi-fi,
already a little spooked, whoevershemaybe’s voice abruptly mutated from a light
croon into a frankly horrifying blast of vocal rage that actually physically
sent me jerking away in fear. Good job I hadn’t eaten.
Fascinating stuff, and one to keep an eye on, albeit a
widely-dilated, shit-scared one.
JERU THE DAMAJA
D ORIGINAL (ffrr)
WHOOPS, looks like Premier’s been at the ‘nana skins again.
The Gang Starr axis have fully emerged as the true inheritors of Eric B &
Rakim’s dark universe of avant-rap. This puts the boom in the bap and bites
hard, topped off with piano madness like Cecil Taylor has found Jerry Mouse in
his Steinway.
“Blackness” is still too often pushed as a signifier of
relaxed sunny-side-up self-confidence, from Lenny Hernry to Ere Com De Lilt Mon
to that kinda loosed-up orang-utan skank you can see a 100 kids suddenly adopt
up and down the country whenever Cypress Hill gets played in clubs. Try and
shuffle to this and your blood will run cold.
Chill Out And Die.
SEPULTURA
SLAVE NEW WORLD
(Roadrunner)
I’M glad my parents didn’t call me Chili (think about it) as
they once planned. They worked out that they couldn’t afford the inevitable psychiatry
bills and settled for ‘Neil’ and pinning a ‘KICK ME’ sign on my back. I’m sure
Max and Igor Cavalera are glad their parents didn’t christen them “Laughing”
and “Vauxhaull” but they still don’t sound too happy on this, the final single
from their excellent “Chaos AD” LP.
Where most death metal politics usually amounts to wanting
to run round the house butt-naked and piss in the sink, Sepultura come straight
from the war zone, their worldview is so totally monochromatic and medieval, it’s
a ghoulish look into the mind at the end of its tether. Trouble is, the sublime
precision of the music is so seductive, you’re half-tempted to go down the park
with a three-litre bottle of Tesco’s cider and start saying things like “Love
is a lie y’know” or “We’re all just walking corpses man” again like everyone
did in the mid-Eighties.
Errrm, or so I’ve heard.
THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION
TRAIN NO.1 (In The Red)
MARY ELLEN
CARVER
MONOPOLY QUEEN (Sub Pop)
SEEING as how usually, at this point of the page, a load of
disconnected yet similarly (supposedly) ephemeral rap and dance things are
collectively chewed up and spat out in one easily digestible bolus of of
indifference, let’s turn the tables a tad shall we? Yeah!!
Grunge!! You would not believe how many records made by the
geekoid offspring of of chipmunk therapists and racoon farmers from
Inbrednaziville, Ohio I had to lug back to Coventry. There’s f***ing loads of
this stuff and, trawling through it all, I was waiting for that Damascus
moment, the new Shudder To Think or Thin White Rope to come searing out the sky.
But, nope, 90 per cent samey heads-down gutbucket dirges all the way. These two
stood out from the pack, though.
Jon Spencer was actually as good as that Sarra Manning
review of him was, funky swamp blooze bedlam with that fat low end that Pussy
Galore were always missing. This kicks ass and flicks ash in torrid abandon.
And Mary Carver is comedy record of the week, she’s Lisa Suckdog’s (remember
her?) mom, inspired by a dream, Lisa wrote this song for her about someone who
just hadto win at Monopoly, and has
set it to a hideously accurate Sixties light orchestra backing, replete with
miaowing feline chorus and a musical director who looks like Charles Manson’s
older brother. To be encouraged, I feel.
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