BIG BLACK CLOUD!

Upon returning to the house from the demonstration we decided to get full-bore into recording some of our obscure mid-1990s free cassette collection as mp3s.

We have no idea if this is an area where mp3 bloggers are already making their mark, but there's certainly a very fruitful crop of rarities from ten years ago waiting to come out and play. And a sh*tload of mediocrity from Cast. We were avid readers during the nineties of NME, Melody Maker, Vox, and Select, the last of which provided us with the name for this blog.

All of them were apt to give out free tapes now and then, up until about 1996, when they started handing out CDs. Select was probably our favourite, since they were a wee bit more sophisticated in their approach, and, we felt, a little bit tougher in their negotiations with the labels. But Vox (now, like Select, very RIP) wasn't bad either.

In 1995, Vox gave away a tape called Class of 1995 that made us reconsider a lot of the British music that was being produced back then. There was some Therapy?, which we loved, but also some Verve, Pulp and McAlmont & Butler, which were almost good enough to make us regret not following fey UK indie bands.

And there was Black Grape. Black Grape were briefly huge, almost as big as the Happy Mondays, from which they drew much of their membership. But the mixture of this slickly produced funk with Sean Ryder's babbling always made us a little bit queasy.

But this is good. A remix of "In The Name Of The Father" with Ryder's vocals slouching around in the background, and all manner of toasting, rapping and shouting going on up front. The beats are much bigger, and the noises much more squelchy, and there are no irritating backing vocals either. Wicked.

Black Grape - "In The Name Of The Father (Chopper Mix)"
Buy the 12" single here. One of the tunes has no singing on it at all. That's probably awesome