Needle Time

  Scritti Politti - Cupid & Psyche 85 [V 2350 UK 1985 24-Bit 176.4kHz FLAC] After leaving the independent sanctuary of his Rough Trade squat following the excellent and almost faultless  Songs To Remember album in 1982, Green Gartside headed to New York in search of his pop chops. There he teamed up with musicians David Gamson & Fred Maher for his long awaited second album. Cupid & Psyche 85 abandons the low fidelity innocence of Songs To Remember in favour of polished mid-eighties pop sounds performed with a whole bunch of American session musicians - including one guest appearance by the great Marcus Miller, helped along by the production skills of Arif Mardin. Apart from maybe just a few tracks, namely the singles Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin) , Perfect Way & The Word Girl , it was time for the original Scritti Politti fans to move along and be replaced by the new slickly dressed & highly polished pop music buyers who lapped up Green's ...

Scritti Politti - Songs To Remember [ROUGH 20 UK 1982 24-Bit FLAC] During 1981, Green Gartside left the Ladbroke Grove squat, dumped the rest of his post-punk collective and bought some Stevie Wonder records - and possibly a few albums by other soul artists. This marked a dramatic change in direction as he both smartened up his style and his music.  Unleashed with a trio of excellent singles, Songs To Remember stands up well to the years (most have already featured here), but it is the sublime funk of  Lions After Slumber which remains as one of my favourite tracks of all time. The track just oozes from the speakers, I love the bass, the sibilance, the raw hum of the studio and the cool drum machine & moog groove. What happened next was hit and miss, but thankfully he has now disposed of the white silken robes with matching slacks and slippers! A1 Asylums In Jerusalem A2 A Slow Soul A3 Jacques Derrida A4 Lions After Slumber A5 Faithless B1 Sex ...

Scritti Politti - 4 'A-Sides' [RT 027 UK 1979 24-Bit FLAC] If anybody has any idea what on earth Green is singing about on this EP or in fact any of his early songs, then answers on a postcard please. Musically these four tracks are sharper than anything which went before. Green's jagged guitar riffing is almost funky (in a Josef K kinda way), however the time signature changes are more akin to your average seventies prog album ...perhaps it's more pronk . The closing track on the flip,  P.A.s  still stands after all these years. A1 Bibbly-O-Tek A2 Doubt Beat B1 Confidence B2 P.A.s

Scritti Politti ‎- Work In Progress [SCRIT 2 UK 1979 24-Bit FLAC] The second Scritti Politti single was essentially a self-released pressing of their first John Peel radio session. The band followed this with a four track twelve inch EP and then began work on their debut long player in 1979, however Gartside fell ill and returned to his native Wales from the Camden squat. Whilst convalescing, he lost interest in the punk ethic and began an appreciation of soul music. The rest of the band chose not to stick around.  A1 Messthetics A2 Hegemony B1 Scritlocks Door B2 OPEC-Immac

Scritti Politti ‎- Skank Bloc Bologna [SCRIT 1 UK 1978 24-Bit FLAC] Post-punk obtuse squat dub from the original Scritti Politti line up of Tom Morley, Nial Jinks and Green Gartside, ripped from an original self-released debut 7" single. A1 Skank Bloc Bologna B1 Is And Ought The Western World B2 28 / 8 / 78

Scritti Politti ‎- Faithless (Triple-Hep N'Blue) [RT 101 UK 1982 24-Bit FLAC] A new 2019 rip ....and it sounds just great! You can't pigeon-hole the early-mid period work of Green Gartside. The earliest post-punk singles were dubby, squatty messy songs, the Peel tracks were better.  In 1982 Green washed himself down, got his life back on track and lucky for him Rough Trade were brave enough to stick around to let him find his true self and write proper songs.  The superb album Songs To Remember was responsible for three great singles. All three were big indie hits to restore Rough Trade's faith but Green's next move was to jump ship and to re-invent himself in the form of a pop star on Virgin Records, and then he began to pray like Aretha . Faithless is the best of the three. It is the most subtle and divine form of electronic soul/funk, almost gospel at times. Love the vocoder, love Joe Cang's fantastic bass, love the way the whole song just dive...