The ever-careful liner notes by James Nice contain all you would need to know about this rather lovely archive CD. They record, among other things, that DISLOCATION DANCE were voted "band most likely to succeed" by Smash Hits magazine in 1983.
By then they had already been in existence for 5 years, experimenting with a range of rhythmic, lyrical and instrumentation possibilities that bore much richer fruit for HAIRCUT 100, ORANGE JOUICE, THE SMITHS, JAMES and SCRITTI POLLITI.
Reading the notes and listening to the songs (the whole of 1983's "Midnight Shift" album and a number of singles and alternative takes) some things start to make sense. And, maddeningly all the old questions pour back in with no obvious answers.
Why is it that one band hops about on the fringes – friends with many and tipped by influential people (including the Buzzcocks in this case) – but doesn’t actually prise cash out of pockets, while another dives head first into the bottomless pit of public acclaim? Tours with bigger names and positive reviews in national press; an offer from Factory Records; final resting place with Rough Trade: these things should go straight into pop history and a retirement bungalow on the back of royalties on a couple of classic indie club hits. But not in this case. There will be a thousand current bands experiencing exactly the same bewildering frustrations. Why not us?
If any of us knew I guess we would be rich. One obvious feature of this collection (also obvious on the LTM simultaneous release Music Music Music/Slip That Disc) is the strain caused by restless style hopping. Sometimes several styles get into one song, sometimes the leap from one track to another feels uncomfortable. For example, after the mariachi tinged ballad of "Bottle of Red Wine we get dub inflected torch song "Midnight Shift". With Ian Runacres singing on the one and Kathryn Way duetting with herself on the next, the abruptness of the change has no real logic. And when "Midnight Shift" goes into a lovely pre-tortoise jazz section I just want to shout HOLD IT THERE! I LIKE THS BIT! HOLD IT! But they don’t.
|
And whatever bit you do like (there are many such) you will have it taken away fairly swiftly, to have something less agreeable offered instead.
It isn’t as if the band could really carry off the technical job of carrying so many sounds. Andy Diagram's trumpet playing, to my non-jazz ears, doesn’t sound Premiership at all. Sometimes the ambition leaves him a bit exposed with some dodgy intonation or questionable pitch. It might have impressed the pop fiends at Factory, but without the electronic and avant garde cloaks of later work, he doesn’t always sound convincing on these direct and faithful recordings. The rhythm section is generally first rate, if not scintillating.
And then, at the end, there is the lack of a killer song. Pretty well fatal, I'd say. There are lots of club-livening tracks and no end of four bar chunks to sample into DJ mixes. But they all disappear into the mixes on here without awakening memories of the great tunes they came from. Cruelly, I checked OANGE JUICE'S "Rip it Up" after I'd been through the DISLCOATION material a couple of times. Whatever they were all aiming for, ORANGE JUICE got a direct hit on the jugular, while DISLOCATION DANCE tickled a hundred different soft places.
|
