And staying with the retro angle, the welcome return of The Scratch. 'X-ray eyes' is the bands second release following on from their stupendous debut 'I relax to spiral scratch' late last year, with an album 'DIY' in the can and due for release any day soon this two track affair pressed up on 10 inches of wax has the band flexing their collective influential muscles to reveal a wicked grooving genius in their midst. Whereas 'Scratch' capped them as renegade punksters 'X-Ray eyes' sees them cocking a snook at the dance floor crowd, an unrelenting beauty that channels the grittier elements of the Gang of Four's trademark grind and marries it to the dub / disco crossover that Strummer and Co aimed for on the often overlooked 'Sandinista' throw in for good measure Big Audio Dynamite, a taster of Pigbag a few sly Ry Cooder sliding hooks and you have something of a dirty disco assassin that Bobby Gillespie you'd imagine would be happy to be caught in the line of fire of.
Flip over for the mooching 'Brainstorm' which hazily throbs with laid back darkly lit druggy vibes floating in the distance, not a million miles from the Shamen before they discovered E had they decided of course to remould the whole of Happy Mondays back catalogue and dispatch the baggy scene for their own, but all you want to hear at the end of the day is that it sounds like Duran Duran and the good news is that yes it sort of does had they of course ever been fed bad pills and suffered psychotic reactions, wore shades and instead of listening to Japan and Bowie in their formative years chose to listen to Japan and the Velvets. Pretty damn essential.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment