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...

I got into trip hop by accident. Brought up on Britpop, I'd never heard any until I randomly won Time Out's Best Albums of The 90s competition which included Massive Attack's 1991 classic  Blue Lines . Having belatedly thought I'd 'got it', I recently decided to explore it again to actually understand what happened and what I hadn't envisaged was just how vital a role women played in its creation and so to celebrate Mother's Day and International Women's Day (belatedly in true Bristolian fashion!), I'm going to showcase what Neneh Cherry and the ladies that followed did for the most exciting musical development to come out of Britain in the nineties. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away... existed The Wild Bunch, Bristol's most pivotal music group or rather posse - in the hip hop sense - were formed by (above from left) Grant Marshall (now Massive Attack's Daddy G), rapper Willy Wee, Nellee Hooper  and DJ Milo Johnson, after being in...

            A few months ago it was the 40th anniversary of Joy Division's seminal post-punk masterpiece Closer and then last month the 30th anniversary of New Order's great World Cup Italia '90 song World In Motion, which got me thinking....has there ever been a better 10 year musical arc than this? In 1980, on the eve of the release of  Closer,  Joy Division's second and final album on 18th July 1980,  it would have been inconceivable that the same band - for that is what Joy Division and New Order effectively are - would have written a bright catchy pop song with a house beat and a rap less than a decade later but that is exactly what happened when  World In Motion, was released on 21st May 1990:        Closer is just about as far away from World In Motion as you can get, a melancholic and powerful thought-provoking album. It proved to be their swansong but of course they didn't know it at the time; nine gre...

Before life changed immeasurably and I like most of the rest of the world had to go into lockdown, I went to see a band I'd barely heard of, at a venue i'd never been too.. Saturday 15th Feb seems a world away now, it was cold, blustery and dark, a typical British Feb evening then. Indeed life was normal. A friend and I, on his recommendation, decided to see Half Man Half Biscuit , one of Britain's unsung bands, one of our Top 100 cult heroes (according to Mojo Magazine at least) and a band that has outlived most other Post-Punk/Indie bands that started around the same time. It's also a band I'd virtually never heard as being a Nineties kid meant I missed Post-Punk and the early Indie bands outside of The Smiths and The Jam (who had been revered by my Britpop heroes at the time). It was a first in more ways than one tonight, being also my first visit to Roadmender, Northampton's and indeed the East Midland's premier venue for live music, particularly fo...