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The Monochrome Set Eligible Bachelors

The Monochrome Set Eligible Bachelors 

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One of the classic albums of the early '80s by a band that doesn't get the love it should, the Monochrome Set's Eligible Bachelors from 1982 is a tour de force of wit and musical imagination. This was their first album for their new label, Cherry Red, and they certainly made the most of their opportunity. Songwriter and vocalist Bid turned in a set of witty, urbane, and hooky tunes that fulfilled the promise of the quartet's earlier recordings, guitarist Lester Square showed himself to be a master off catchy riffs and perfect fills, and the rhythm section of bassist Andy Warren and drummer Lexington Crane kept things light and swinging. Bustling through 11 songs so sharp and intelligent that it's easy to listen to the album multiple times without getting bored, the band and Bid are at the absolute top of their game, a game that others like Haircut 100 and Orange Juice were also playing. The Set and their ilk merged jangling guitars, jazz-influenced chord changes, painfully arch lyrics, deadpan vocals, and jumpy rhythms into something shiny and fun, quite often with a dark undercurrent. Eligible Bachelors is certainly the equal of Pelican West or Rip It Up; the surplus of songs that sounded like hit singles everyone forgot to buy ("Fun for All the Family," "I'll Scry Instead"), trenchant bits of social commentary set to a jittering dance beat ("The Jet Set Junta," "The Ruling Class"), and pretty pop tunes ("Cloud 10") see to that. Unlike those albums, it didn't catch fire with the general public, and left the Set pondering just what they had to do to break through. If creating their masterpiece couldn't get the job done, what was left for them to do? Luckily for fans of Bid and his band, they didn't give up, but even if they had, Eligible Bachelors would stand up as a definitive work of the post-punk/new wave era. [Though the album had been reissued a few times in the intervening years, it wasn't until 2018 that Cherry Red gave Eligible Bachelors the expanded reissue treatment it deserved. Along with remastered sound and a nice booklet, the album is expanded to three discs. Along with the album proper, the first disc adds 15 singles released between 1978 and 1983, including the one song that actually became something of a hit in 1979, "He's Frank (Slight Return)." Disc two includes a treasure trove of radio sessions; a snappy demo for "The Ruling Class"; and a batch of fun rarities. All the rarities had been released previously in different places, but it's good to have them together under one roof. The final disc comprises Fin, the live album released by Cherry Red in 1986 featuring recordings made at various venues between 1979 and 1985; a solo demo made by Bid in 1986; and the three-track single he released in 1986 for Él Records, a label run by Mike Alway, who had initially signed the Monochrome Set to Cherry Red. The extras are all well chosen and really give an incisive and fun look at the band around the time leading up to and after the release of Eligible Bachelors.]

Colin Newman Bastard

Colin Newman Bastard

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Although he doesn't cop to it on the accompanying literature for Bastard, Colin Newman's seventh record since the dissolution of Wire is heavily influenced by contemporary pioneers of trance/dance like Orb and Aphex Twin. But Newman goes at it in a brash, singular and typically erudite fashion: After recording several of Bastard's tracks with his vocals—Newman was Wire's primary singer—he made a conscious decision to remove them. As such, the record shows a less obvious personality than his sung material. But there's still a sense of humor: Newman's take on drum 'n' bass, the skittish "Slowfast (Falling Down The Stairs With A Drum Kit)," is so dizzyingly fast it'd be virtually impossible to dance to. Other tracks, especially "Sticky" and "Spaced-In," vibrate with an almost robotic funkiness. Unlike late-period Wire (or Wir, as it were), Bastard's grooves are not coldly antiseptic and numbly detached; a thick mix of insistent guitar and pointedly plucked electric bass on "May," and the spiraling "Spiked," show Newman's musical ideas to be as flexibly coherent as ever. Through his Swim~ label, Newman has been releasing an interesting slew of esoteric and ambient music in various permutations—usually electronic. But this time, he seems to have purged much of those minimalist/house elements, and has wisely avoided saddling these songs with too much technology. Bastard represents his first rock-oriented material in a long time, and while Newman claims to have been interested in (and unsatisfied by) recent similarly inclined music, his album ends up owing nothing to anything but itself. It's an impressively visionary, futuristic record from a musician who's still important.

Porcupine Tree Stupid Dream

Porcupine Tree Stupid Dream

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Porcupine Tree's first album for K-Scope/Snapper starts out with a definite bang -- "Even Less," with some of the quartet's biggest, blasting rock epic music yet, yet also shot through with the gentler, acoustic side that makes Porcupine Tree so intimate and lovely. The net result easily calls Yes to mind, but Steven Wilson's not so high-pitched as Jon Anderson and Richard Barbieri completely avoids Rick Wakeman's extreme idiocies -- prog that knows when less is more. With that as a fine signal for the album as a whole, Stupid Dream takes it from there -- Wilson as a songwriter and singer both sounds recharged and more ambitious, while the group collectively pours it on. The loud passages feel truly sky-smashing, the calmer ones perfectly close, and the overall sense of build and drama -- "A Smart Kid" is a fine example spot-on. Strings from the East of England Orchestra and guest work on Wilson's sometime Bass Communion partner Theo Travis add even lusher atmospheres without swamping the tunes. As always, the group isn't afraid to experiment where others merely re-create check out the funky breaks Colin Edwin and Chris Maitland lay down on "Slave Called Shiver," not to mention Wilson's catchy piano figure and Barbieri's Hammond organ fills. Lyrically, Wilson comes up with some of his best work yet. "Piano Lessons" looks back on past musical learning and a doubtful teacher as a spur to trying harder, while "Pure Narcotic" offers up a romantic scenario and tip of the hat to Radiohead all at once: "You keep me hating/You keep me listening to The Bends." There's actually a musical hint or two of the Oxford quintet as well -- the acoustic guitar/drum intro to "This Is No Rehearsal" is a good example -- but leave it to Porcupine Tree to drop in some fully plugged in metal, as well

Autechre Tri Repetae

Autechre Tri Repetae

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Starting with the snarling, slow machine-funk of "Dael," Tri Repetae fully confirms Autechre's evolution into electronic noise kings. If not as immediately experimental as the fractured work by the likes of Merzbow, Tri Repetae expertly harnesses the need for a beat to perfectly balance out the resolutely fierce, crunching samples and busy arrangements, turning from being inspired by Aphex Twin to being equally inspiring in itself. "Rotar" does a particularly fine job on this front, with high-pitched sounds against low, distorted bass blasts -- and this only forms part of the percussion arrangement. The basic combination of soft melody and harsh beats are here as well, coming fully to the fore and resulting in such fine songs as the synth-string/organ wheeze laden "Leterel" and the quirky, sweet "Gnit." Nearly every track has a particular edge or element to it, making it eminently listenable and distinct. "Stud," for all of its macho connotations, actually takes a gentler path than most of the album's tunes, with a flowing synth wash at the center of a stripped-down but sharp digital-drum punch; by the end of the song, the synth loops float freely in an uneasy, ambient wave. With the drowsy pulse of "Overand" and the echoing beats of "Radio" (perhaps not so ironically, the most straightforward of the album's songs) to close things out, Tri Repetae stands as a varied, accomplished album, clear evidence of Autechre's unique genius around sound

Adam F Colours

Adam F Colours

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Too many drum'n'bass artists rely on obvious clichés, leading critics to dismiss the genre on the whole as repetitive. Like Roni Size before him, Adam F hopes to change all that, adding some intriguing spice to the typical, skittering breakbeats-meet-bottomless basslines sonic stew. Opening with the blaxploitation funk of "73" -- chunky wah-wah guitar, bopping congas, rollicking drumbeats and all -- Adam F makes his desire for diversity clear right from the get-go. Drum'n'bass is merely the template from which he launches his heady sonic excursions, flowing seamlessly from the straightforward jungle of "Metropolis" into the brilliantly accessible soul of "Music in My Mind," which boasts dreamy keyboards and a vocoder melody Midnight Starr would kill for. The rest of the album is similarly diverse, from the ambient atmospheres of "Mother Earth" to the strangely gorgeous pop of "The Tree Knows Everything," which features vocals by Everything But the Girl's Tracey Thorn. For purists, there's also a Grooverider remix of "Dirty Harry" and Size's reworking of "Circles," but Colours offers something to please just about every techno fan.

Cabaret Voltaire #7885 Electropunk To Technopop 1078-1985

Cabaret Voltaire #7885 Electropunk To Technopop 1078-1985

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Until this 2014 set from Mute, Cabaret Voltaire's periods with Rough Trade (1978-1982) and Some Bizzare/Virgin (1983-1985) were anthologized separately, as presented on The Original Sound of Sheffield '78/'82 and The Original Sound of Sheffield '83/'87. These discs also drew a greater distinction between CV's output with and without founding member Chris Watson, who departed after the final Rough Trade release, 1982's 2X45. Compiled by the group's Richard H. Kirk, this squeezes 19 of CV's finest 1978-1985 moments on one disc and also provides a service to more serious fans by including 7" versions of several Some Bizzare-era singles. (The 1983/1987 disc used the 12" versions.) Smart selections make this the best and handiest introduction to a group crucial to the development of industrial, post-punk, and dance music, from the confrontational screamer "Nag Nag Nag" to the more accessible and no less brilliant electro cut-up "Sensoria." There's much more to explore through the EPs and albums, recirculated through an extensive reissue campaign overseen by Kirk. Additionally, the one-offs for Factory and Crépuscule aren't represented here. The booklet, featuring essays from Kirk and the Mute label's Daniel Miller, is an extra enticement.

Michael Head & The Strands The Magical World Of The Strands

Michael Head & The Strands The Magical World Of The Strands

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Michael Head, former frontman of the Pale Fountains and current co-leader along with his brother John -- who is also a Strand -- of Brit pop outfit Shack, turns in a stellar chamber pop performance with Magical World of the Strands. Head, who is no stranger to either classy, baroque pop or neo-psychedelia, has composed an album of gorgeously illustrated songs that are lushly orchestrated by a standard rock quartet augmented by a flutist (Leslie Roberts) and a string quartet. The result is an album that, while little known, is a classic, a masterpiece of modern chamber pop. Released in 1997, this disc walks the line between the deep, darkly expressionistic chamber work of the Tindersticks and the airy, classically augmented breeze-laden pop of Nick Drake à la Five Leaves Left -- long before the millennial obsession with the latter's work was revived due to a Volkswagen commercial. The disc's first two tracks, "Queen Matilda" and "Something Like You," are striking in their seductive, velvety tenderness. The ghost of Drake is everywhere, floating in and hovering above the strings. In the refrain to "Something Like You," one can even hear his voice in Head's phrasing. The difference, however, is in how Head composes lyrics: he's more economical; he merely illustrates the essence of what he's communicating--be it image or emotion--and leaves the listener to fill in the blanks. The other huge influence on Head and the Strands is Pentangle, with slippery modal folk and rock. This music could have been recorded in the early '70s, but what it conveys is timeless. What reverberates through this album on every track is musical savvy. It's in the lyrical reverie of "X Hits the Spot," with jangling guitars and subtle backbeat. "It's Harvest Time," recalls Dave Cousins and Strawbs with open, ringing 12 strings, and piping, echoplexed flute. The electric-acoustic guitar tradeoff between Michael and James in "Fontilan," contains a melancholic theme inside a spacious mix colored by swelling strings. Throughout this gem showcases compositional class and an aesthetic sensibility at once artful yet completely accessible to anyone with an interest in well-written, -played, -produced, and -sung pop.