Suchergebnisse: Dance Music

Review: Happenstance can be a fortuitous element. A union-funded single discovered in a dusty store, a long disbanded band found, leads to unreleased post punk dubs in a box of unreleased demos.

Formed during the mid-80s in the downbeat town of Walsall, their music is a blend of disparate influences from 50's crooners, blues and reggae to Killing Joke and The Bunnymen; Ron's Neighbours were out of step with the perfect pop of the C86 indie generation.

Their only single - "To The Fight" - a split 7" was supported by the Trade Union Resource Centre, while many gigs were benefits for striking miners, leading to a loyal local following.

Engineered by Ozzy Osbourne's brother Tony, tracks were recorded at an 8 track bedroom / home studio, while a terraced house served as rehearsal space. Here Ron Next Door was born. When a tape recorder was left running it captured the long-suffering neighbour for posterity. His outburst gave the band and song, its name.

Experimenting with drum machines, the resultant jam track, here in its "Alternative Mix", languished unheard until now. Ron's 'Black Country' tones lead to driving bass / percussion against crashing Stratocasters and repeating, refrained vox - a post punk dub turned symphony.

The B side, Sitting On Top of the World, is an indie anthem, becoming their theme, a blend of grandiose and banal that characterised their songs.

Review: Emotional Rescue returns to early 1980s Manchester with the previously unreleased music of Michael James Pollard and his beautiful distillation of indie pop in Too Confusing and bedsit cover version of Ashford and Simpson's Surrender.

While studying photography at Manchester Polytechnic, (MJ) Pollard lived and played in a band in a ramshackle house in Walley Range. In the cellar studio he would write and record his own songs using their guitars, fretless bass and keys, as well as his own Casio VL-Tone VL-1 and Simmons Clap Trap to augment his drums onto a 4 track TEAC.

By 1983, and now solo, he was recording out of Dislocation Dance's studio (ERC111), had secured a Peel Session and via Factory Records' Lindsay Reade, was discussing with Fundacao Atlantica about releasing an album.

Working with singer Sioux Goddard as a duo, they put down 8 songs in 2 weeks in summer '84. However, Fundacao Atlantica's financial difficulties and soon closure meant the songs were lost until now.

Recovered off the original tapes and lovingly restored, Too Confusing captures the optimism of the sessions, a summer love melody of forlorn youth. Surrender accompanies, recorded back in that cellar in '81, with friend Stephanie Danziger on vocals, its lo-fi simplicity is a perfect take on an all-time classic, making this a newly prized gem of British indie pop history.

Review: It won't have passed you by that the world's longest running (and most commercially successful) rock band is back. The big news, of course, is that the Rolling Stones have recorded their first album of new material in 18 years, Hackney Diamonds, which will appear in stores and online next month. To whet the appetite of fans old and young, they've served up 'Angry' - a one-track CD single that has been manufactured in relatively limited numbers. To be fair to the old timers, it's genuinely 'prime' Stones fair - all gnarly rhythm and blues riffs and sprawling solos (courtesy of Keith Richards, of course), yelp-along vocals from the effervescent Mick Jagger, and a suitably sturdy rhythm section. A return to form, as many critics have already pointed out.