The debut album from Wythenshawe trio DIRTY NORTH is a surprisingly accomplished blend of classic dub styles and street sounds that authenticate what amounts to a no-bullshit perspective on life as seen from the outer fringes.
Dispensing universal truths one after the other with scary accuracy, front man Johnny Gregory keeps pace with the demands of this daunting set of classic influences reworked so beautifully by cohorts Carl Palmer and Dave Cookson . Furthermore, his instinctive but unnatural Wythenshawe freestyle somehow manages to prevail against all the odds.
The title track is the first to emerge out of the opening frenzy of radio-dial psychosis to remind us that much of the fast-earned but fully deserved DIRTY NORTH reputation has grown thanks to their strength as a live unit. Yet only after the otherworldly broken-hearted grand finale 'Did You Know' has brought the record to a close is its true worth revealed:
Gregory's appraisal is modest by comparison:
“Life's like a house of cards, a roll of the dice - snakes and ladders! You never know what life will throw at you;
"Love life, financial life, social life, career... it can all be viewed as a game;
“Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down - that's mainly what we wanted to put across”'.
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The razor-sharp skank-fuelled DIY observations that bolster 'Down My Road' and 'Down In The Game' are counterbalanced on the one side by the desperate psychosis of 'House Of Cards' where the hall-of-mirrors confusion and big reverb bring a cataclysmic sense of revelation to the record's darkest hour.
The astonishing speed at which the sheer momentum builds to transform both the music and its' unassuming creators into an unnerving obliterative force is literally breathtaking. In terms of emotional honesty alone, 'Down in The Game' puts up a show of strength that few other artists will match this year.
Large-scale pride, immense self belief and an instinctive tendency to fire straight from the heart are the most obvious factors at work throughout an album that not only equals the huge weight of expectation that surrounded it prior to its release, but goes on to frequently defy the gravity of its own brilliance.
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