lefreeakblog

Around this time last year I started a small piece to mark the 25th anniversary of Billy Mackenzie's death, the former lead singer of the Scottish post-punk band The Associates who died on 22nd January 1997, leaving us with short but stunning legacy, all wrapped around an incredible four-and-a-half octave voice. I regrettably never published it at the time and with the sad news a few weeks ago of the passing of Alan Rankine, Mackenzie's co-founding Associate colleague I thought I best to revisit it and finish it off (so here we are :D). My reaction to the news reminded me of the kind of group The Associates were in their first incarnation - uncompromisingly single minded, esoteric and alas quite brief; a brilliant 3 albums - if you include their singles compilation Fourth Drawer Down - in a little over 22 months. And all the music written and recorded by Alan Rankine, every last instrument, solo, electronic synth and guitar riff.  A quick glance online backs up their cult stat...

The first full uninterrupted year post pandemic saw us enjoy gigging and clubbing again and I was thankful to get to see a lot more live music than I had the previous few years with The Killers, Anne-Marie & Manic Street Preachers all providing memorable sets. The range of music released was perhaps wider than ever with the blurring of house and hip hop not letting up, indeed there was a reported revival of sorts with house identified as having a rebirth. Whilst this was largely spearhead by big name pop acts in the charts, for the primary product - the album, LP, Playlist - it was the hip hop that artistically made the most noise with great albums by Black Thought, Kendrick Lemar and Nas (again) whilst Pusha-T, Little Simz and Drake made vital contributions as well. This got me thinking back to Black Thoughts comments to Complex in 2017 about the crossroads that hip hop and its culture are at: are we now starting to see a subtle change in direction? With the huge social change see...