Volume 12 Side 4 - Catherine Wheel, Moose, Levitation, Miranda Sex Garden, KLF

1. Catherine Wheel - She's My Friend (Wilde Club)

Great Yarmouth's Catherine Wheel were often regarded somewhat sniffily by the indie kids who sulked around my particular corner of the college common room. If My Bloody Valentine were the unquestionable innovators of shoegazing, and Ride had the melodic aggression and Slowdive the woozy pastoral atmospherics, Catherine Wheel felt a bit plastic and commercialised for some. The fact that the lead singer Rob Dickinson was the cousin of Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson and they signed to a major label as quickly as they could caused suspicious eyebrows to be furrowed too.

Truth be told, though, I genuinely liked - and like - the fact that Catherine Wheel brought a much lighter, frothier sound to the scene at this point in time. Compared to My Bloody Valentine some of their singles are effectively the early nineties equivalents of Status Quo's "Pictures of Matchstick Men", but for what it's worth, I love that single too. I enjoy it when pop collides with more underground ideas.

"She's My Friend", their debut single, enters the fray cautiously without too much in the way of frilly melodies. It's heavy on distortion and effects pedals, and has a sledgehammer guitar riff running through its core, but the sweet and pie-eyed nature of the vocals lift things up and stop them from becoming too rockist. It's seductive and psychedelic, seeming to have one foot in the shoegazing scene and the other in the recent Madchester past. It's closer to Blur's "She's So High" than My Bloody Valentine's "To Here Knows When".

We'll be meeting Catherine Wheel again and will have another chance to discuss them, but what is notable about the group is how they managed to forge a career way past that of any of their contemporaries, issuing their final LP in 2000 and even managing a string of mid-placed Top 75 singles until that point. Cult success in America and a willingness to adapt their sound as times moved on both acted in their favour.



2. Moose - Jack (Hut)

"We almost laughed..." "Jack" introduces itself abruptly on your stereo with the vocals, the rest of the band jumping in as if lead singer Russell Yates has surprised them with his sudden need to burst into song. The rest of the track swirls and snarls itself into a state of giddiness while Russell's indifferent delivery makes him sound like the indie Bernard Black.

The term "shoegazing" was apparently coined based on what one live critic witnessed at an early Moose gig, where Russell sellotaped the lyrics to some of the group's songs on the floor and sang most of the set with his head bowed, motionless. It wasn't meant to be a badge of approval, and indeed the term was thrown around somewhat disparagingly to start with before it became considered a "movement". As an attendee of many of the gigs by groups we're going to encounter over the next few entries, I can verify the fact the fact that whatever the value of the recorded work, a lot of these bands were spectacularly tedious live, and had tendencies to regard acknowledging audiences as being an unnecessary extra task. If you didn't have a full-time job and saved up money to go and watch bands play live as often as you could, it stuck in the craw when you effectively witnessed a rehearsal on stage behind an invisible glass wall. Some groups were far worse than others - and we'll get on to that - but in general, the scene didn't really make you feel as if it was a great time to be alive and of legal age to be let into gig venues. At least at the height of C86, there was some comradeliness with the other groups on the scene. At this point, the bands were often shambolic and aloof with it, which brought a frostiness to the party nobody really wanted. (The Manic Street Preachers bemoaned the scene's lack of obvious stars. Personally, I'd have just settled for more David Gedges or Andrea Lewises who actually possessed the ability to communicate something to an audience).

I never did catch Moose live, however, and only have rather critical live reviews to go on. On vinyl, they often packed a punch and delivered some of the movements more touching ballads as well. If Tindersticks had changed direction completely and reported to their local guitar shops to purchase a variety of effects pedals, there's a chance they might have ended up sounding a lot like Moose - sombre, reflective, a bit fragile but also giddy sounding. "Jack" rattles along confidently but has small, almost unidentifiable drops of moody Country music in its bones too - and as Moose's career went forward, they would begin to emphasise that aspect of their sound more.

For now, though, they were the quintessential cult shoegazing band, issuing critically praised records very few people actually bought.



3. Levitation - Nadine (Ultimate)

Strange as it may sound now, The House of Love were expected to be one of Britain's most successful alternative rock bands at the tail end of the eighties. Nobody talked about how it might happen, and everyone assumed it just would. Their early singles "Destroy The Heart", "Christine" and "I Don't Know Why I Love You" were all bordering on genius, and with Guy Chadwick's gift for weaving haunting and moody melodies and Terry Bicker's talent for creating unexpected and enchanting fretboard work, they seemed certain to go a very long way.

Sadly, however, Bickers lived up to his surname and was the source of endless bickering in the group and apparently "erratic behaviour". His relationship with Chadwick in particular was notably tense. In the middle of one argument, he began chanting "Guy Chadwick is a breadhead!" repetitively while burning banknotes under the irate singer's nose. He was thrown out of the group not long after, for which Alan McGee berated a hurt and demoralised Guy in a phone call with the words "You're nothing without him! Do you understand me? Nothing!"

McGee may have been short on tact, but he wasn't wrong. While The House of Love recorded some good singles after Terry Bickers' departure, it was apparent that they were never going to scale any creative heights again. And Bickers, cut loose from the sensible framework of Chadwick's melodies, took the opportunity to form Levitation and go full-on batshit with an occasionally almost proggish noise. As is often the case with creative divorces, nobody really came out on top, least of all the record buying public who were given two "quite good" bands as opposed to one who might genuinely have occupied the space The Stone Roses instead squeezed into.

Levitation's output often walked a tightrope between sheer psychedelic nonsense (albeit often entertaining nonsense) and strokes of the familiar Bickers genius. Just when you thought the group were going to hold on to a promising riff and build a straightforward epic single, they had a tendency to veer off in bizarre directions, often guided by Bickers inventive guitarwork. That their output has become much loved by some isn't in dispute, but for me it often feels too indulgent to connect.

"Nadine" was the lead track off their debut "Coppelia" EP, and is one-and-a-half minutes of blissful, flowery contemplations almost worthy of Donovan with a subtle, almost sleazy easy listening brass backing and occasional outbursts of noise. Anyone thinking Bickers possibly had a shot of becoming some kind of indie king had their expectations destroyed almost as soon as this burst out over the airwaves of evening Radio One - it's likeable, but a truly baffling opening statement of intent. And so it would continue.



4. Miranda Sex Garden - Gush Forth My Tears (Mute) - vinyl and cassette only

Although it has to be said, Miranda Sex Garden were almost as baffling an inclusion to the indie pantheon as Levitation were. Originally consisting of a female trio of madrigal singers, their first LP "Madra" was entirely a cappella, and made the group sound like something John Peel might have signed to Dandelion Records circa 1973.

Instrumentation was introduced to their sound after that release, and while they played with a full paintbox of possible sounds - often incorporating industrial, electronic and ambient textures into their mix - they never quite fitted in anywhere. "Gush Forth My Tears" is one of their most commercial moments, and while the Internet is being no help at all, I'm fairly sure it was briefly used by British Airways on a television commercial which (provided I'm not having a total memory failure) boosted its visibility a lot further than relying solely on airplay might. It also has a twittering, insistent electronic production which at its best almost recalls some of Ann Dudley's work with Art of Noise. It's a genuinely beautiful piece of work which is unexpectedly touching in places, and could perhaps have become a minor hit had it received enough support at the time.

I caught Miranda Sex Garden supporting Spiritualized on tour around this point, and while my memory is weak for most live bands of this period (as we've established, many of them were dreary) I can still visualise that gig to this day. The sight of women clad in black singing madrigal songs to grinding guitar atmospherics is something you struggle to forget.

Perhaps inevitably, some of the members eventually moved on to form the Mediæval Bæbes who had considerably more success, selling hundreds of thousands of LPs with a traditional sound not always terribly far removed from Miranda Sex Garden's origins.



5. KLF - Last Train To Trancentral (Pure Trance Version) (KLF Communications)

Like most KLF singles, "Last Train To Trancentral" came in a number of styles, flavours and guises, some seemingly limited to a bare hundred or so white labels, others the subject of more substantial limited edition runs.

This, the original "Pure Trance" version of the track, was limited to 2,000 copies and was barely really noticed on its original release in March 1990. Unlike the original versions of "What Time Is Love?" or "3am Eternal", which were sparse, repetitious floor-fillers, this is much more melodic and ambient in tone, dropping much more intricate and fluid synthesiser sounds into the mix - at some points, in fact, it comes close to aping the most dinner-party friendly moments of Jean Michel Jarre without quite crossing the line into eighties frothiness (perhaps Guru Josh had been dripping advice into Drummond and Cauty's ears).

Despite its relative complexity, it does still sound very sparse up against the final Stadium House mix, which was arguably the KLF's peak achievement on 45, and also less atmospheric than the elements which were utilised on "Chill Out" a mere month before. In common with a lot of less familiar KLF remixes or versions of their best-known work, it's likeable and curious sounding, but ultimately just leaves you hungry for the real deal. "Last Train To Trancentral" in this form is a pleasant and enjoyable journey, but in other forms it scales mountains.

Still, in those pre-Internet days if you hadn't been fortunate enough to buy one of the 2,000 copies of the original version of this single, this volume of "Indie Top 20" was your only hope - and at the time, I was grateful for the chance to have this on vinyl in some shape or form.

Indie Top Video Take Five - Carter USM, Eat, Thee Hypnotics, Shack, KLF

Year of Release: 1990

The next instalment in the Indie Top Video series was downright odd, if you want me to be honest, readers. An unexpected plethora of bonus tracks (four, or five if you count the different version of "What Time Is Love") even though there were plenty of tracks from Indie Top 20 Volume 10 they could have got perfectly respectable videos from.

The most notable omission here is The Farm's "Groovy Train", which was the biggest hit on Volume Ten, closely followed by the bizarre absence of the Inspiral Carpets. The Darkside are also missing, as are The Family Cat... either some rights issues were going on with this particular VHS edition, or all concerned decided to rationalise the track listing a bit.

Quality visuals clearly weren't everyone's prime concern, as some joker obviously thought the slow-motion video for The Pixies "Velouria", arguably one of the worst music promos known to humankind, was worthy of inclusion.

Anyway, let's turn down the lights, pull out some sickly sweet cornershop popcorn and one of those giant tins of Faxe beer we all used to guzzle (or I did, anyway) and ponder the contents.

1. Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - Rubbish (Big Cat) - bonus video

Jim Bob once quipped (in the liner notes to their Greatest Hits LP "Straw Donkeys") that the only reason they were keen to issue "Rubbish" as a single was to force their fans to enter record stores and ask for their new single, which was rubbish... because it was.

A likely story, I think. "Rubbish" is as catchy as hell, complete with its Game-n-Watch synthetic intro, its sample overload (including John Peel) and its almost skiffle-styled chorus. On this occasion, it's not especially clear what the boys are waffling on about, though. "I'm underage and uninsured/ on the High Road to Domestos/ Chloraflouracarbon Lord/ Asbestos Lead Asbestos" Jim Bob snarls, quoting the ingredients list of detergent bottles and World Domination Enterprises song titles in one breath for no clear reason at all.

It's a piece of bin-kicking, hook-ridden punk rock, though, and while it never caught indieland's imagination as much as "Sheriff Fatman", they clearly weren't going to disappear on us. An "ITV Chart Show" slot opened up for them with this single, and while nobody thought pop stardom beckoned for the band, they surely and steadily reached more people.



2. Eat - Psycho Couch (Non-Fiction) - bonus video

Ange Dolittle, lead singer of Eat, is one of indie's stalwarts. From Eat to Weknowwhereyoulive (consisting largely of ex-Wonder Stuffers) to Big Yoga Muffin, he trod the boards with a number of outfits and led them with an icy assurance. Both the press and fellow musicians seemed to talk about him as if success was assured, but in the end Eat remained a cult concern, and one dogged by inter-band tensions and bad luck.

"Psycho Couch" received single of the week in the NME and got voted a "Miss" on the revamped, Jools Holland hosted "Juke Box Jury" - mixed fortunes, but you can't fault the level of exposure. It's an odd, decidedly psychedelic single, and one which didn't seem to belong in 1990 or indeed any other time. A rock and roll bassline meets an almost gothic atmosphere and rattling drums to sound faintly threatening, slightly eerie, rather unusual and crucially unlikely to break through.

The video was partly animated and while not as luxurious or detailed as Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer", nonetheless showed that a lot of effort was being put into breaking the band. It's not available on YouTube, but you can see it on MTV's site, along with what must surely have been a very reluctant cover of "Summer In The City" (which also did nothing for them).

Eat recently reformed in 2014 and have resumed their careers, even issuing a new single "She Cries Flowers" in 2016.

3. Pixies - Velouria (4AD)

4. The Telescopes - Precious Little (Creation)

5. Spiritualized - Anyway That You Want Me (Dedicated)

6. Thee Hypnotics - Half Man Half Boy (Situation Two) - bonus video

A slow, snaking, bluesy groove dominates "Half Man Half Boy", making Thee Hypnotics sound a tiny bit more commercial than on previous "Indie Top 20" outings - though really, all these things are relative.

Press for Thee Hypnotics was ecstatic at this point, and not just the traditional sniffy scribes at Melody Maker and NME, but also Kerrang as well. The indie kids at IPC towers saw the group as being the modern heirs to The Stooges distorted riff and roll, whereas Kerrang journos just saw them as a furiously dirty and thrilling live rock band. At this point, Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes could also be heard singing their praises.

Unfortunately, far from being a crossover band uniting both the floppy-fringed and the greasy-haired, they really remained a cult concern.



7. The Charlatans - The Only One I Know (Situation Two)

8. Mock Turtles - Lay Me Down (Imaginary)

9. Shack - I Know You Well (Ghetto) - bonus video

Liverpool's Shack are often talked about as being the group that slipped through the net - the band who should have been absolutely massive in the early nineties but barely had a sniff of success. Certainly, they were firm favourites among critics, who gushed forth endless superlatives about their classic tunesmithery.

They were certainly dogged by bad luck, like an enormous amount of bands featured on "Indie Top 20". The master tapes for their finest work of this period, the LP "Waterpistol", were destroyed in a recording studio fire. Their producer left behind a DAT recording of it in a hire car, which took weeks to track down and recover, only for their label Ghetto - which had been largely coasting on the minor success of The Lightning Seeds for some time - to go bust.

"I Know You Well" was a standalone single which didn't end up on that LP, but is a mellow, shimmering piece of sixties inspired pop with a marginal amount of wonkiness on its side as well. That rushing, distorted merry-go-round sound which occurs at the beginning of the track and halfway through feels like the gentle slide into the darkest recesses of your couch after one joint too many, while the main melody spins around your head. And indeed, a spliffy fog did often hang around Shack's music - nothing at all wrong with that, and they were far from being the only offenders, but the contemplative introspection of their work would actually be better suited to the tail-end of the decade. Perhaps it's not too surprising that they had their biggest critical and commercial success in 1999 with "HMS Fable", then, way outside the timelines of this blog.



10. Sp!n - Scratches In The Sand (Foundation)

11. Paris Angels - Perfume (Sheer Joy)

12. Flowered Up - It's On (Heavenly)

13. Saint Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Heavenly)

14. The Shamen - Make It Mine (One Little Indian)

15. KLF - What Time Is Love (Live At Trancentral) (KLF Communications) - bonus video

Or the KLF's big breakthrough moment. "Doctorin' The Tardis" had been broadly (and incorrectly) dismissed as a novelty single by many, and at the time you would have been forgiven for believing that they were destined to never be much more than situationist pranksters.

That would be foolish of you, though. While their debut LP "1987 What The Fuck Is Going On" is messy and more of a statement than a coherent piece of work, the follow up "Who Killed The Jams" showed that they understood how to create pop music as well (and perhaps the key pointer towards a more overground future was their largely forgotten 1987 Christmas single "Downtown", which I've written about on my other blog).

The Pure Trance original of "What Time Is Love" was a minimal piece of work which, while highly regarded at free parties, was never going to be a hit by itself. This Stadium House version (though nobody was was really calling it that at this point) was something else. Building on the foundations laid by Bomb The Bass, Coldcut and S-Express in mixing pop music with House music, it then scales new heights. The original central riff for "What Time Is Love" was a delicate affair, but for the "Live at Trancentral" version it sounds like it's being blasted through a hundred tannoys at once. It becomes a clarion call to dance, combining with Acid House squelches, a confident if slightly Daisy Age-ish rap from MC Bello, and pounding rhythms... even from a present-day viewpoint, it still sounds staggering.

There were DJs and fellow journeymen at the time who accused the KLF of "selling out" after hearing this, feeling that they'd spoiled the original Pure Trance vision they'd created and written a monstrous pop song with the main riff. Utter piffle, I'd say. I owned the "What Time Is Love Story" compilation before this version saw the light of day, and while the original is powerful, outside of the context of a club or a party it loses a lot of impact. The "Live At Trancentral" version takes the main riff, turns it into a chorus, and creates something incredibly muscular and hi-fi friendly in the spaces available. Even the audience roars are a magical element, making you feel as if the rave has suddenly arrived in your bedroom, while the ambient astronaut samples keep you floating long after the song has finished. In short - it's majestic. Very few songs manage to translate the magic of a hedonistic night out to the stereo at home, but this does it with unbelievable assurance.

Indie Top 20 Vol 10 - Side One - The Farm, The Shamen, Paris Angels, KLF, Renegade Soundwave

Year of Release: 1990
Formats: Double Vinyl/ Long Play Cassette/ CD

The trials and tribulations of Beechwood Music continued unabated throughout 1990. The launch of Volume 9 of the Indie Top 20 series had, as we've discussed before, been disrupted by distribution issues. And the launch of Volume 10 saw an unexpected rival emerge in the form of the as-seen-on-TV mass-marketed compilation experts Telstar Records. They rushed out the freaky-dancing flavoured LP "Rave" at almost exactly the same time as "Indie Top 20 Volume 10", and was there a lot of crossover between the two tracklistings? Why yes, there was.

In direct response, a peculiar act of sabotage happened at Telstar's headquarters. Staff emerged one morning to find that their office had been plunged into semi-darkness by the appearance of fly-posters for "Indie Top 20 Volume 10" glued all over the windows. Beechwood Music denied responsibility and put the blame squarely on "fans of their series" - highly dedicated fans who also had access to quality printing machines, the graphic design masterplates of the latest Indie Top 20 sleeve and lots of glue, I'll bet. Telstar chose not to get the police involved and put the activity down to Christmas hi-jinks that had got out of hand, adding that "it's good to have a bit of competition over the period". The free publicity certainly can't have hurt either party...

In the end, "Rave" easily won out in the sales wars, and that's not surprising. It was a cheaply, sloppily produced piece of vinyl with the tightest microgrooves known to man meaning you had to crank the volume right up to get anything much out of it, but it was cheap. And for all that, it did actually contain some odd surprises. The Blue Aeroplanes, for example, and Ocean Colour Scene (in their baggy incarnation) and The Wicked Things, who released records on their own label and hardly anybody had ever heard of. In fact, they're not even on YouTube to this day.

As you can tell, I abstained from this great Indie Compilation War and bought copies of both albums like any good diplomat would. Telstar's effort is far poppier and features a bigger hit single quota, but "Indie Top 20 Volume 10" feels better overall. As we'll now see.

1. The Farm - Groovy Train (Terry Farley Mix) (Produce)

"Forget the music. These boys have got the most practical clothes I've ever seen" Harry Cross.

(You can, if you want, read some of the below entry in the voice of Alan Partridge).

Not long after I started attending sixth form college, I got myself involved in the college radio station.  I briefly ran a very naive and ramshackle little show with a friend of mine, and to try and drum up some interest in it, we decided to run an end-of-year Festive Fifty styled poll of the student's favourite groups and solo acts. We approached people in the common room and during breaks to get them to give us their top three artists of 1990.

This exercise taught us a lot about teenage music tastes in South East Essex at this time (and also that walking around with a pen and notepad asking people their favourite bands made you seem like a dork at best or a sex pest at worst, but hey, most of us on college radio were definitely dorks). Firstly, more young people appreciated Phil Collins in 1990 than any NME, Melody Maker or even Smash Hits poll would ever have told you. He finished at around number twelve picking up lots of nods from deadly serious, usually faintly unfashionable youths who couldn't have given a shit that they weren't supposed to like him (if it had been an anonymous poll, I'd have been interested to see if his standing improved further still). Paul Simon managed to nudge in at number twenty by the skin of his teeth. And The Farm? They won overall. Aced it. They were the college's favourite band of 1990.

We were flabbergasted at the time, but looking back there were other factors afoot. We were asking people not long after the hugely appreciated "All Together Now" had been released, a record both my friend and I actually fancied taking a bet on being that year's Christmas Number One (especially after we added up the poll results). Also, The Farm were proving to be one of indie's great crossover bands. Most indie groups and their fans, even at this point, seemed aloof, judgemental and ever so slightly weird to the Henry and Wendy Normals of Britain, who didn't like loud guitars or skinny kids with floppy fringes on drugs. The Farm, on the other hand,  were happy-go-lucky football supporting Scousers with cheeky grins on their chops and ordinary clothes and haircuts who also happened to be making some very voguish noises. Not only would they gain appreciation in my little corner of the world, but Smash Hits readers would award them "Best Indie Group" at their Poll Winners Party as well.

"Groovy Train" was, of course, their big breakthrough moment, making number six in the National Charts. Featuring a nagging and squeaky guitar riff, shuffling beats, and faintly pissed off lyrics about a haughty lady, it does sound unbelievably of its moment. When an indie-dance crack into the mainstream emerged in 1990, they rushed through it with gusto and threw everything they had at the wall, seeming like a family-friendly version of the Happy Mondays who probably wouldn't try to sell you drugs if they bumped into you at a nightclub. Even the chorus here is gloriously, piss-takingly cynical. "She says: Get on get on get on get on get on/ the groovy train" indeed, although from this distance it does seem as if Hooton was trying to get a rise out of baggy's biggest fashion victims.

In the end, though, The Farm are one of many groups throughout history to prove that when you're the mainstream pop flavour of a fleeting indie/ alternative zeitgeist, history tends to forget you and classic pop stations just don't play you all that much. For all its success at the time, "Groovy Train" is very seldom heard these days, whereas "Step On" and "Kinky Afro" remain inescapable by comparison.

It would have been good to get further chances to discuss The Farm again purely to get under the skin of why their demise throughout 1991 was so incredibly swift, despite releasing one of their finest singles in "Love See No Colour" - but they don't feature on "Indie Top 20" again after this.



2. The Shamen - Make It Mine (One Little Indian)

"Continually slotted in the same genre as The Happy Mondays, The Beloved, The Stone Roses and other indie-dance crossovers - The Shamen, like they did with "Pro-Gen", take it one step further with "Make It Mine"". 

The Shamen really were entering an effervescent period of their careers at this point. "Pro-Gen" was all brassy melodies and excessive lyrical positivity, and "Make It Mine" ups the ante, taking neon Housey keyboard riffs and loud, distorted guitars and managing not to make them sound mismatched. "Jesus Loves Amerika" this isn't.

"Make It Mine" is one of those peculiar singles which sounded way more punchy and almost dangerous in 1990 than it does now. At the time, this seemed like a unique proposition, whereas after the likes of EMF and Jesus Jones poked into the pop charts, it began to feel somewhat sterile. It's important to try to remember that The Shamen did a lot of this stuff first, though, and were incredibly quick to pack the guitars away into their cases and lock them away in storage before the sound became outmoded.



3. Paris Angels - All On You (Perfume) (Sheer Joy)

(No sleeve notes were provided for this track).

It's been suggested by people far wiser than me that the early nineties indie-dance phase is ripe for a carefully compiled "Nuggets" styled compilation or box set. The theory goes that there was an explosion of creativity, energy and passion during the brief period which owed a debt to, but also acted as a progression beyond, the late sixties psychedelic era.

And it's indeed odd the way the "baggy era" has been condensed in rock history to the obvious names (Roses, Mondays, Charlatans, Inspirals) when so many other groups released astonishing pieces of work outside of the Top 40. The careers of the also-ran bands, much like their sixties cousins, may mostly have been confined to one or two dynamite 45s and one very patchy LP, but those sticks of nitroglycerin created some of the happiest nights of my life.

"Perfume", whether you like it or not, was absolutely huge among a certain crowd at the time. Big enough that there were a couple of instances of Paris Angels graffiti at my sixth form college (probably inked by the same person, to be fair) and that it was a constant alternative club staple. But unlike so many 1990 singles, it still sounds unbelievable. From that cheeky "What Time Is Love" inspired loop to the jangling guitars and the epic, soaring, choral female backing vocals it absolutely soars. It's the sound of young kids with access to huge record collections digging through the debris to cherry-pick the finest noises and finally come up with something that sounds utterly contemporary - the Ian Curtis styled drone of the male lead vocals balances brilliantly with the angelic backing of Jayne Gill to create something really bittersweet, something which is every bit as much "indie" as it is "dance".

Even the video manages to present the band as a bunch of garage-based urchins who just happened to have stumbled on a magic formula - smirks and grins all over their faces as the track builds and explodes into dancefloor bliss. Sadly, they never would sound this fantastic again, and a subsequent LP for Virgin Records - released just as the sunset emerged for the whole indie-dance genre - failed to completely live up to expectations. But for "Perfume", I'm completely happy to give the group a lifetime pass. It may have happened by accident rather than design, but it's a staggering, towering piece of work, and one I still return to a great deal.



4. The KLF - What Time Is Love? (Echo & The Bunnymen Mix) (KLF Communications)

"The KLF first released the original version of this track in November 1988 when it was virtually ignored. In March 1990 they played three dates with the new look Echo & The Bunnymen after which The Bunnymen went into the studio to rework the track for posterity".

Ah yes, the "new look" Echo & The Bunnymen. That would be the McCullochless incarnation absolutely everyone has ever forgotten existed, as McCulloch sodded off to form Electrafixion, another band whose impact on popular culture was somewhat negligible.

Still, this reimagining of "What Time Is Love" proved that the band's darkest days did at least produce one source of light. Filled to the brim with backwards guitars, sitar loops, tabla rattling and mystical samples, WTIL was given an unexpectedly old-school psychedelic reworking. Even if the nature of the track becomes trance-like in an old school 1967 way rather than a modern capital "t" Trance way, it acted as a perfectly valid gateway between the droning pop of the sixties and modern Acidic sounds, showing that there was a common lineage whether anyone (apart from Steve Hillage) wanted to acknowledge it or not. They even threw in the goose noises from Pink Floyd's "Bike" at the end to really labour the point.

Ultimately though, would I rather listen to the original? Definitely. In fact, there are even better remixes of "WTIL" out there than this, the Hendrix-riddled "Techno Gate" mix of the track on the original track's B-side being  but only one example. The Echo & The Bunnymen mix of this is a curiosity rather than a superior version, but that didn't stop Telstar from also giving this version a place on their "Rave" LP as well. After all, I suppose - why try to grab sales from fans of one band when you could earn sales from two?



5. Renegade Soundwave - Biting My Nails (Bassnumb Chapter) (Mute)

"A pulse-quickener of a beat, weird dub particles and stray radiation waves from dying satellites, all collide in an effect like a sharp intake of crystal meth."

I'm not sure who those sleeve-notes came from, but Renegade Soundwave sometimes did have a faint whiff of Super Hans about them... so odds-on it was one of the group.

That aside, "Biting My Nails" is a minimal and bass-heavy, robotic and almost threatening sound. It would later be souped up for use in the Nintendo console adverts, showing that while the single itself remained relatively underground, it had a slick modernity about it which loaned itself well to "the kids". It still sounds bossy and threatening even now, but all without losing any appeal - while The Shamen et al may have been punching their fists in the air, Renegade Soundwave were still a bit sinister and devilish in comparison.

Volume 8 Side 2 - James, A Guy Called Gerald, KLF, Alien Sex Fiend, The Shamen

1. James - Come Home (Rough Trade)

"Strengthened for the future. The nineties might see James pissing on the likes of Stone Roses and The House of Love, freaking out the Happy Mondays and filling the gap left by The Smiths. Don't let the new James pass you by" - Mix Mag, December 1989.

Mix Mag? Mix Mag?! But yes indeed, "Come Home" was James in their most loose-fitting clothes, flirting with piano bashing House riffs, frantic rhythms and angst-ridden lyrics. There was a whiff of desperation about all of this - "If 'Sit Down' can't be a hit", seemed to be the logic, "then we really have to keep up with the times and release a truly current sounding single".

Unlike a good many releases of this ilk, though, "Come Home" sounds fantastic to this day. Whether the band were chancing it or not becomes an irrelevant question next to the sheer force of the track. Tim Booth's vocals kick in immediately with the none-less-party-friendly line "It's that time again when I lose my friends/ go walkabout - I've got the bends from PRESSURE". Once again, for the second release in a row, the group prove themselves to be masterful at producing singles with tremendously conflicting emotions. The strength of the overheated drumming and busy guitarwork on "Come Home" powers through the doubt and angst and creates something fidgety, desperate to shake off its angst through dancefloor activity.

Once again, it was not a "proper" hit, but they'd sod off to a major label very shortly afterwards and return revitalised and actually quite massive. By the time their next LP fell on to the release schedules, Baggy was almost a memory and they had reinvented themselves as an adventurous bunch of stadium rockers. Nothing wrong with that per se, but I still wouldn't have minded hearing what a Rough Trade produced album would have sounded like in early 1990. Like its predecessor "Sit Down", the re-released version of "Come Home" just didn't cut it in quite the same way.



2. A Guy Called Gerald - Hot Lemonade (Rham)

"Rham Records follow up to 'Voodoo Ray'. Hot Lemonade is the title track of Gerald's LP - Remixed by Youth".

"Voodoo Ray" was such an almighty TUNE during this period that any follow-up A Guy Called Gerald released was going to be living in its shadow, and that unfortunately proved to be the case. While his previous release continued to be played in clubs and bought in record shops, "Hot Lemonade" was greeted with a baffled reception and is largely forgotten today.

Of all the follow-up singles to HUGE TUNES I can think of, it is perhaps one of the most confusing. To a series of euphoric dance rhythms, clarion calls and atmospheric, chilled synth twiddling, a man and a woman with Italian accents talk endlessly and deliriously about the delights of a beverage known as Hot Lemonade. "I just love... de bubbles... and the shhhhhhhhhhhhh!" they explain, imitating the fizzing sound of a drink being poured. "I..... I neeed Hot Lemon-aaade!" Of course, many people pointed out that "Hot Lemonade" is also slang for urine, and the sexual undercurrent behind the track may be about water sports.

Where you stand on this depends entirely on your general temperament for absurd monologues occurring over the top of club tunes. Personally, it's one of those tracks I've never quite bored of. There's an unreal, almost disturbing atmosphere throughout the whole thing, and if you heard this at your local warehouse party while ripped to your very tits on a pill, it might cause you to doubt your sanity. At home, however, it's a delightful and fascinating mix of ideas which shows more daft adventure than "Voodoo Ray" ever did. And at the very least, the spirit of Derek and Clive could be said to be running between the two very comfortably.



3. The KLF - Kylie Said To Jason (KLF Communications)

"We wore our Pet Shop Boys infatuations brazenly on our sleeves while we recorded this track and we are proud of it. As for Kylie & Jason, the lyrics are not some attempt at a clever critique on our current soap idols".

"Kylie Said To Jason" was the KLF's follow-up single to "Doctorin' The Tardis", a track the pair would claim was carefully crafted to be a number one shortly after it reached the top in the UK (although this sounds a piece of fanciful retrospective thinking). It too was supposed to follow the single into the charts and provide them with some more money to finish their long-awaited film "The White Room" and rescue them from 'the jaws of bankruptcy', but in the end it failed to even get into the Top 100. 

Shortly after its failure, however, a series of limited edition Trance records cut by the pair began to pick up play at clubs and at numerous free parties and 'raves' around the country. After capitalising on this credibility by remixing and reproducing some of the tracks with the aim of getting them to chart, their careers skyrocketed into the major league, and platinum discs, Brit Awards and critical acclaim followed. Unfortunately for the poor, maligned "Kylie Said To Jason", however, it was a mere piece of Pet Shop Boys aping pop which would have been poorly received by the underground groovers and shakers at the time, and as a net result it never appeared on "The White Room" album (despite having a place in the early rough tracklistings) and was never re-issued anywhere officially. 

This is all rather sad, as "Kylie Said To Jason" probably is one of the finest records the KLF shoved out. It is as sarcastic in its tones as it is surreal, reeling off lists of Antipodean stereotypes whilst keeping a bouncing Europop beat running behind. That it didn't catch on and ride the zeitgeist of all things "Neighbours" that dominated at the time may have been due to the fact that the whole affair didn't make much sense to anybody apart from KLF fans. There are no repetitive catchphrases to be had, no obvious jokes, and no use of whacky samples. It's even subtly catchy rather than poleaxing listeners with its reference points, and has a sudden diversion during the outro which is both thoughtful and pleasing. It breaks more or less every single rule for novelty success, then, where "Doctorin' The Tardis" could not be seen to fail.

Despite - or more likely because of - the above, it's been one of the KLF singles I've returned to most frequently. The Pet Shop Boys would have killed to have turned out something like this, and while it  may stand out like a sore thumb in the middle of the rest of their catalogue, it's sodding great, and really should be heard by everyone, not just fans of the KLF.

As for the "White Room" film, it was never properly finished, though rushes exist online of the "exterior" elements of the script. In places, it feels like a truly beautiful long-form music video, so we're not necessarily worse off than we might have been.



4. Alien Sex Fiend - Haunted House (Anagram)

"A classic fiendish dance thrash especially remixed by Youth from Brilliant and scratched over by DJ Cesare from Gee Street Records".

Goth Dance? Whatever next? In fairness, there was always a dance element to Alien Sex Fiend's Gothic rock, with them happily indulging in dub remixes, samples and uptempo and camp doom and gloom. Therefore, a remix by Youth wasn't such a ridiculous step into the unknown.

"Haunted House" was a slightly hollow and dated sounding track for 1989, though, sounding like a bedroom-produced Art of Noise rip-off. There's nothing here worthy of greater praise or analysis than that.

Alien Sex Fiend, of course, enjoyed a long history on both the Goth scene, the National Top 100 and the indie charts, being a cult band with a seriously dedicated following. In a reduced state with only a couple of the original members left, they remain a going concern.



5. The Shamen - Omega Amigo (One Little Indian)

"This single became a club classic from The Shamen. Their musical style has progressed from psychedelic high energy guitar rock to an edgy pop with far more rhythmic feel inspired by the House, Hip Hop and EDM sounds they have absorbed since moving down south a year ago. They continue to move Phorward".

And really, this is the point the band truly arrived. "Omega Amigo" wasn't a proper hit single, but is an almost impossibly blissed piece of electronic dance music, like finding an oasis of calm amidst a seething mass of frantic activity. The central chorus, if it could be called that, is really just a continually stretching, reaching and watery keyboard riff, while Colin Angus assures the listener "Omega Amigo for you, I will always have time". A pulsing, plucking, gentle and busy riff dominates the rest of the track.

Like "Pacific State" by 808 State from around the same period, "Omega Amigo" is a gently stroking hand on the brow amidst a sea of hedonism, an oasis of calm amidst the delirium. I still think it's one of the finest singles the band ever released.