London Hauling Part Two – Bees, Larks and Muscleheads (and HH)

Yes indeed… blog fever going on, too much tumbleweed and cobwebs round these parts. Next after this will be the interview with Jahdan Blakkamoore which is just requiring a little tidy up and assembly but in the meantime – between time, here’s another couple from the shelves of Albion.

A little bit of a dub inflected shape to these two from a couple of reliable soldiers in the music wars. Both releases have been around for a minute but the things is good tunes don’t fade, in fact if anything they do quite the opposite.

I ordered The Bees remix of ‘Hatbox’ by Lark from a couple of shops a looong time ago and managed to miss out both times, the perils of mail order I guess, as it was probably back in stock the day after my order was winging its way EnZedward. The decidedly laid back, Isle of Wight, six piece are always guaranteed to give good remix, and this hazy little smoke bomb is no exception. Had a most enjoyable interview with bass player Aaron Fletcher after their last album came out, and man knew his tunes, in fact from memory it was a series of enthusiastic diversions with very little chat about the band or the album they just released. Probably not my greatest feature then, but a tip top band nonetheless.

Lark are a London outfit who have their debut album out on Care In The Community. They remind me an awful lot of a whole heap of bands I used to see in the early 80’s, and I’m still not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. As with The Horrors and a few other recent outfits they will have to break through the initial overpowering ‘not sure about them vocals’ scenario, but they are a good way down the track with instrumentals like ‘Tardis’ (up on their moispazz pagelette) which bakes my cake big time. There’s also a Brendan Lynch mix of that track that is predictably excellent, and I must haul that 7″ in too, unfortunately nowhere I can find to link with a legal DL that, or their album. I’m investigatulating, keep you posted if there’s anything worthwhile to report.

Previously I couldn’t resist this slice of dubwise electroid future skank from the Emperor Machine, taking Higamos Hogamos’s ‘Infinity Plus One’ to a strange and wonderful place that could actually be the earbuds of a William Gibson cyberdread type character. Any of the four tracks on this 12″ are worthy of posting, the Higamos Hogamos original ‘The Creeper’ is a twist and kraut korker, the other mixes of ‘Infinity Plus One’ from a more typically positioned Emperor Machine and an utterly on feu Muscleheads, also dish out the damage in JCB style amounts. I’m going to plump for the latter, having got halfway through this and realised I’ve already posted the Emp Mach dub six months ago, oops. Never mind with lashings of slap reverb and eerie sounds a plenty on top of a well plump beat the Muscleheads mix is a right charmer, and one of three revelations that were just icing on a well fruity cake when I copped the 12″ in Phonica. DC run things once again.