If Young Marble Giants flirted with Testcard music, then Alison Strattons' post-YMG group, Weekend, actually made Testcard music, disguised as parisienne café jazz......which is also Testcard Music I suppose?
Its some type of trendy indie spliced with the kind of limp jazz that plays in the background of pretentious restaurants.Its quite pleasant and inoffensive, but who wants to be that?
Again this is the kind of wet student music that Cherry Red specialised in at this time; the Pillows and Prayers crowd. Rough Trade should have swapped this lot for the Nightingales, who didn't really belong alongside Everything But The Girl and The Marine Girls.
Having said that, being an oficionado of Easy listening, I like it!
If this was a lost volume of Library music from some East-European TV station I would be praising it to the hilt; but as its some kind of attempt to be a retro-cool hybrid, it has to be treated as such. Recycling the past to an audience ignorant of what has gone before is basically a cop-out.If i wanted to listen to some mellow Café chic I'd dig out an old Antonio Carlos Jobim and Astrid Gilberto album.Which is a fuck of a lot better than this pale imitation by some welsh post-punk refugees.To think Spike used to be in Reptile Ranch?
There were lots of sterile bands like this around 1982,Blue Rondo,Carmel,Matt Bianco, Working Week, EBTG.....terrible stuff. This carried on evolving and we ended up with the uber-trendy 90's Acid Jazz format, as an alternative to the endless intravenous feed of House music.Luckily this led onto more interesting area's like Loungecore, Jungle, and the Incredibly Strange Music phenomenon.
As a reaction to Punk and NWOBHM, Weekend scores quite highly. The high point being Alison Stratton's reinvention as the new wave Astrid Gilberto, by singing in exactly the same style as she did in the Young Marble Giants.
If this was a lost volume of Library music from some East-European TV station I would be praising it to the hilt; but as its some kind of attempt to be a retro-cool hybrid, it has to be treated as such. Recycling the past to an audience ignorant of what has gone before is basically a cop-out.If i wanted to listen to some mellow Café chic I'd dig out an old Antonio Carlos Jobim and Astrid Gilberto album.Which is a fuck of a lot better than this pale imitation by some welsh post-punk refugees.To think Spike used to be in Reptile Ranch?
There were lots of sterile bands like this around 1982,Blue Rondo,Carmel,Matt Bianco, Working Week, EBTG.....terrible stuff. This carried on evolving and we ended up with the uber-trendy 90's Acid Jazz format, as an alternative to the endless intravenous feed of House music.Luckily this led onto more interesting area's like Loungecore, Jungle, and the Incredibly Strange Music phenomenon.
As a reaction to Punk and NWOBHM, Weekend scores quite highly. The high point being Alison Stratton's reinvention as the new wave Astrid Gilberto, by singing in exactly the same style as she did in the Young Marble Giants.
Tracklist:
1 The End Of The Affair 3:05
2 Weekend Stroll 3:23
3 Summer Days 2:53
4 Carnival Headache 2:51
5 Drum Beat For Baby 2:57
6 Life In The Day Of Part 1 3:49
7 Life In The Day Of Part 2 2:23
8 Sleepy Theory 2:52
9 Woman's Eyes 2:49
10 Weekend Off 3:20
11 Red Planes 4:46
12 Nostalgia 3:50
Bonus Tracks:
13 A View From Her Room (12 Inch Version) 8:11
14 Leaves Of Spring 2:40
15 Past Meets Present 3:38
16 Midnight Slows 2:03
27 Drum Beat For Baby (12 Inch Version) 4:17
DOWNLOAD the weak end of post-punk HERE! |
1 comment:
Très cool. Merci!
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