A Certain Ratio

Oh jesus wept. In WHAT WAY is it 'JD-parody-ish'? WHAT WAY? WHICH 'Earlier Stuff'. Alright I'll concede that the voice is low-register kinda tuneless and not exactly a million miles from Curtis (of course ST stood in for IC a couple of times) but musically, apart from the original All Night Party/Thin Boys it's nothing like. DoJo's drumming makes sure of that.

BTW - All Night Party on the 'Ballroom' side of G&B has the best intro ever. Droning guitar noise, huge pop as a jack is plugged in, a mumbled word from Topping and a fucking great explosion as DoJo's drums come in insanely fast and syncopated. 'My Life Is Just/An Angry Blur'. Indeed.

I could wibble on for hours, but I'll just say "Go buy" and leave it at that. Sextet to follow soon, I hope.

Go on, Jeff. WIBBLE!

A.C.R.

M.C.R.

Their best stuff is far, far better than anything Section 25 did.

oh, come on. acr could be a mighty band, but nothing they did touches "hilltop". (and nothing in the entire universe touches the hilltop megamix. an album in a song! genius.)

that said: i did go through a small period of genuinely believing "i won't stop loving you" to be the greatest song in the whole world, so ask me again in a year's time.

Oh, wait.

Bimble - is the 'horns' thing you refer to Tony Quigley's soprano sax work? If so, yes it's great and unique. The solo in And Then She Smiled is wonderful.

It's interesting that SXXV were mentioned - I think both bands are cut from the same cloth - experimentalists wh0 never stayed still. In fact that's really the Factory ethos. I think of ACR and SXXV in the same way as I think of Can. In fact Can must have been really important influences on both bands. (look out for the cheeky steal of the Aspectacle bass line in Knife Slits Water! There's also a ley line direct from Monster Movies to Aways Now)

Bimble - what is it about Sextet that makes it hard to deal with for you? I agree about MCR - it's kinda dull.

I agree with grimly's comments re : Hilltop and it's megamix. Staggering!

Do the Du if anyone cares.

Nice. :-)

(You'll approve, Dr. C, I actually *purchased* some LTM stuff recently, so I am not solely living off largesse. Cath Carroll's England Made Me, the Department S disc...even Crawling Chaos's The Gas Chair. ;-))

England Made Me is one of the greatest records ever made.

"the big E" is a good song; "won't stop ..." is a fucking powerhouse of propulsive genius, the single greatest new order song new order never made.

if you don't have MCR, bimble, and haven't heard that version ... you need to rectify that. and MCR ain't easy to come by. e-mail me if you want, eh, a hand finding it. weesimon AT mac DOT com

i'll just slink off now and make an arse of something else.

The crazy thing is that I bought that Homonculus outtakes record *first*.

England Made Me is one of the greatest records ever made.

I am about to listen to it here at work. :-)

Anyway, I don't know of this "Won't Stop Loving You" thing (you mean they changed the title and everything? bastards!), but I do hope they didn't mess around with it too much. Much as I love New Order, I do not think bringing Barney into every situation automatically means a fabulous record. But I will look around for it.