If you've previously checked out Whisperin' & Hollerin's review of 2002's Cherry Red PASSAGE compilation "Seedy" you'll know we're happy to endorse the rich, strange, varied and often ahead of its' time back catalogue of this singular, Manchester-based trio from the early 1980s.
Thanks to the industrious, quality-stuffed LTM label, we can now rediscover this fertile catalogue in its' entirety as THE PASSAGE'S four studio albums (recorded between 1980 and 1983) are now available again and rammed with a slew of singles and previously unreleased tracks to pig out on.
Chronologically, "Enflame" was actually the Passage's swansong album and it features the band's quintessential line-up of Dick Witts (vocals, keyboards, percussion, songs), Andrew Wilson (guitars, vocals) and Liverpudlian drummer Joe McKechnie. Joe had temporarily departed the fold for the previous "Degenerates" album (to be replaced by Paul Mahoney) but that's another story.
Jeremy Greenwood's excellent 'Keep Br(it)ain Tidy' sleeve graphic gives you an idea of the acute intelligence (barely contained) within, while the neatly subversive black, red and white colour scheme utilised in each Passage release predates the minimal attitude Jack White is continually praised for these days by a good two decades.
And talking of groundbreaking bass-less outfits, The Passage were surely one of these. Indeed, few have attempted their complex, keyboards'n'drums-dominated sound before or since. In context, "Enflame" takes the synth-pop elements of their previous "Degenerates" album and heads somewhere far darker.
The three earlier albums dealt broadly with fear, power and love, but "Enflame" adds sex (as always), plus violence and religion to the list. Several of the tracks are genuinely disturbing: not least the hilariously scary, US TV Religion-dissing "Clear As Cystal" ("Blessed are the peacemakers, the Colts and Gatling guns"); the furious "The Half Of It: Twats/ Sissies" suite and the McKechnie-narrated "Dogstar", which centres around a frightening run-in the drummer had with a bouncer at a Munich nightclub.
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By this stage, though, The Passage had learnt to temper their uncompromising ideals with poppier, approachable moments, and indeed "Sharp Tongue" and the album-preceding single "Wave" (included here) both join "XOYO" in the shoulda-been-huge Passage singles list.
Add to this the thrashier, Fall-style rumble of "Man Of War", the groundbreaking "Drugface" (with Witts' "drug fits the face" vocal famously sampled by Moby - a man who clearly understood where The Passage were coming from) and five stunning tracks from the band's terrific final demos, including the ambitious brass'n'harp featuring "Song To Dance" and a stripped -down, revamped "Tattoo" and you've got a thrillingly expanded re-issue that still sounds ahead of much of the game today. That it should be The Passage's final full missive is sad, but it's a corking epitaph regardless.
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