Bristol is a city that has managed to not only surprise the wider world with its output but has managed to do the same to the citizens of the place. The 1980's was a decade that personified that aspect to music making out west and the second volume of the Bristol Post-Punk Explosion has managed to capture the vibe to perfection. In the post-punk cauldron Electric Guitars were boiling up a brew that is no better illustrated than in the album opener, 'Language Problems.'
Here we have all the ingredients - plenty of off-kilter hair, scatter gun lyrics, stuttering guitars, buoyant scampering bass plunges, colour blind keyboard lines, insistent drums, and a full-on frenetic set of male and female vocal deliveries. Former Essential Bop main-man Steve Bush (see more below) made a worthy attempt at hitting the mainstream in his alliance with Christian Clarke in the classy Bush and Clarke duo. Art Objects 'Fit of Pique 'then bring us back to earth with a bump - and with some bruises:This is at times brutal, a sonic assault allied to beat poetry from Gerard Langley (later to carry this further with Blue Aeroplanes). Brother John's quick-fire, spring heel jack drumming holds the chaos together - just. The next track also features two brothers - Jon-Jo and Robin Key. The contributions of the pair to their adopted city's music cannot be underestimated. Either/Or was a project that was sandwiched between work with Art Objects, their earlier band the Various Artists and a later in the period major label fling with the classy Love Train. TVI's really are one of the 'lost' bands of Bristol. The group included Tim Norfolk, who went on to success with The Insects, and Alan Griffiths of local post-punk bands Apartment and The Escape (more to follow) who went on to work with Tears for Fears. The sextet of goodies is closed by the full version of 'Giacometti' (Wicked Mix) by Scream and Dance, rather more in the mood that might 'typify' Bristol. It's mightily percussive, dubby, carefree, wild in the country and jazzy. Yet again this features the superb drumming of John Langley. Side two kicks off with The Escape and one of their pinnacle songs 'Eden.' This widescreen epic is chock full of drama and was one of a quartet of tracks they were recorded for, of all people, the Peter Powell Show on drive time Radio One! The band would later to sign to Phonogram and mutate into a very different beast, shorn of their claws. You want pure sound of the drums thunder? That you get from Moskow's take on the TV classic (The) 'Man from Uncle,' live and direct as the agent who shoots them dead. Distant Cousins were Bath's version of a collection of epic making young men. The emotional disturbance of 'The Search' has all the sway and swerve that stays the course. Steve Bush reappears in his Essential Bop moment describing his own song well as 'Eloquent Sounds.' There are some resemblances to the archness of the great Magazine and that's no bad thing. A little of that fairy dust also gets poured on to the jazz-punk-funk explorations of Pete Brandt's Method in their take a chance on us 'Positive Thinking.' The ultimate bonus of this collection is to hear the early days of the phenomenon that would become the renowned producer, Nellee Hooper. His membership of the Mouth collective was given full rein in 'Ooh Ah Yeah,' a filmic flurry a la batterie that Quincy Jones or Lalo Schifrin would have been proud to score. All these tracks are gems of note in their own right - savour the lot!
