Twelve Inches of Pleasure #3 - !!!

!!! - Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story) [Warp Records 2003] - Cat# WAP163

Okay let's deal with the elephant in the room first shall we? !!! is pronounced Chk Chk Chk, or any other three repetitive sounds. They even slap a sticker on the front of their records to explain this. Not since those long ago nutty days of Prince changing his name to squiggle have we had such pretentiousness with a band name. The difference here though is that !!! are fucking aces, whereas Prince was already well on his way down towards the Mormon internet only triple album dumpster where he now resides.

Phew! Anyway, Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story) (did I already use the word pretentious?), is a euphoric slab of dance/funk/punk excellence. It kicks off like it's in the middle of another song before settling down into a wonderfully dirty groove. This is one of those journey records that Funkadelic, Can or early post Barrett Floyd used to make, except there's no denying what era this 12" is from. This is most definitely post house and subsequently is packed full of hands in the air moments. The best of which starts with the song being stripped back to just drums around the three and a half minute mark, then they pile on extra drums followed by a throbbing pulsing bass, next up come the dry chiming guitar chords, still building, constantly building upwards, then the guitar gets more frantic and finally just when it feels like everything that's happened before is going to collapse, comes the triumphant bored-slacker barked vocal "people always ask me, what's so fucking great about dancing?''. It's a killer moment that the song never really manages to top. 

This is one of my favourite ever singles, it's prog for the dance generation, it's uplifting without being braindead, but best of all it works on a dance floor. It's one of those tracks that everyone should play before leaving home on a Saturday night. Honestly.

Twelve Inches of Pleasure #2 - New Order

                                        

New Order - Lonesome Tonight [Factory 1984] - Cat# FAC103

Talking or writing about music in definitive terms is hard enough at the best of times, and as most people would probably tell you, we're a long way away from the best of times just now. I always dread the inevitable 'what's your favourite…?' question whenever I get chatting about music or films with someone I've just met. Dread it that is unless the sentence happens to end with 'New Order B-side'. Since then the words 'Lonesome Tonight' can drop quite honestly from my lips, followed by a mumbled 'Or 1963, one of them two.'

Lonesome Tonight is the flip side to Thieves Like Us, and for me at least is the better song. Despite loving New Order I can't really claim to know a great deal of trivia about them. So I haven't a clue if Thieves Like Us is named after the 1974 Robert Altman film for instance. What I do know is that Lonesome Tonight is cut from the same cloth as Joy Division's Atmosphere. It doesn't really sound like it on first listen, but it shares the melancholy air of it's earlier sibling. It's all there in those majestic drums, obscure lyrics, washes of synth and that distinct Peter Hook bass sound.

We're talking about a time when a New Order single was not only essential, but also a thing to cherish, clothed as they were in pieces of Peter Saville art, they even had B-sides and everything. Of course we're talking about a time that feels so long ago now, a time when the internet was just a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee's eye, The Smiths were a going concern and The Stone Roses were just a bunch of bad goths.

I love the lonely bass intro on this and the way the whole song crashes in after the first few bars. Then there's the guitar that arrives after the 'heart of stone' line, which is just so understated and sublime, typical of Barney Sumner's earlier style. My favourite moment has to be the way the song hangs in the air around the three minute mark, then builds towards that weird unexpected sound, you know the one, it sounds like an aeroplane gobbing on a runway. A proper hairs dancing on my arms moment that is.

My copy of this single used to belong to one of my best friends (Neil), I'm pretty sure I ended up with it in exchange for buying him some bevies when he was strapped for cash one night, since that's how I usually ended up with his records. So whenever I hear this song I can't help but think of Neil in a drunken state needing one last drink and an egg burger/kebab, before we could stagger off home to mine to sleep it all off. Sadly Neil passed away a few years back, so the sense of sadness that's already etched in the grooves of this record have now taken on an even greater resonance for me.

The single can still be found easily enough, and Lonesome Tonight and it's A-side are all present and correct on the aces Substance compilation, that is already somewhere in your record collection surely.

Twelve Inches of Pleasure #1 - Prinzhorn Dance School

Prinzhorn Dance School - You Are The Space Invader (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) [DFA 2007] - Cat# DFAEMI 2189

Glorious reworking of Prinzhorn Dance School's debut single. Optimo (Espacio) (Keith McIvor & Dave Clark) have managed to beef up the original without removing any of what made You Are The Space Invader such a joy in the first place. So whereas the 7" version ran for just a smidgen under three minutes and consisted of a very sparse arrangement (kick drum, snare, huge hi hat sound, augmented with a nice chunky repetitive bass riff, cold guitar and those typical Prinzhorn vocals), the remix manages to keep all of that, throw a few more things in the mix and stretch the running time to double that of the original.

Right from the off there is more percussion (which made me think for ages that this was in fact a DFA remix, which it isn't), and a faster kick drum. In a world where flip sides are dominated by mixes that appear to have very little to do with the original song, this (in typical DFA fashion I should add) is exactly what a remix should be like. It has it's own agenda and yet is sympathetic to the song it's derived from.

My favourite bit is the sudden burst of acid bass and swoops that hijacks the music around the 3.30 mark. It brings to mind the sounds of the classic Atari Space Invader machine that was in every pub and arcade throughout the early Eighties. Which is fitting since Prinzhorn sound like they belong back at the start of that decade far more than being among the games consoles and downloads of our time. To my ears they sound like a braver Young Marble Giants, and should have a RT catalogue number rather than a DFA one. Despite (or maybe because of) all that I think they're great and can't recommend their music enough. You can find this remix easily enough for just a little more than tuppence.