Hifi Sean

(First published in Issue 114 of Electronic Sound magazine, June 2024)

BLANCMANGE
Everything Is Connected
(London)

“Up and down / I’m up the wall / I’m up the bloody tree”? There’s always been a whiff of the kitchen sink about Blancmange, with lyrics better suited to some gritty Alan Bleasdale Play For Today than the balloons and silly string of 1980s Top Of The Pops. But Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe were cracking pop stars regardless, and this splendid career-spanning collection makes a virtue of the dichotomy.

Early Blancmange burnt briefly but brightly, and it’s a gigantic leap from homespun 1981 instrumental ‘Sad Day’ to chart-straddling whoppers like ‘Don’t Tell Me’. 2011 comeback album (and Luscombe’s farewell) Blanc Burn yielded the hilariously deadpan ‘I’m Having A Coffee’ (“There’s something strange at the bottom of the fridge”) and from thereon it’s been Arthur all the way, still effortlessly combining grime and sparkle. New track ‘Again, I Wait For The World’ ties it all together perfectly – written in 1979 and finally recorded in 2024, it’s both sweetly irresistible and defiantly thick-skinned. And that, surely, is very essence of Blancmange.

Album available here:
https://blancmangemusic.bandcamp.com/album/everything-is-connected-the-best-of-blancmange

HIFI SEAN AND DAVID McALMONT
Daylight
(Plastique)

Tired of hanging out the washing in your wellies? Fret not, here come Sean Dickson and David McAlmont with a record specifically designed to soundtrack the bone-thawing charms of the summertime. In a country where, at time of writing, it’s been relentlessly pissing down since last September, they couldn’t have arrived at a more apposite moment. “When I had your shadow / It was warm in the sun,” sings McAlmont exultantly, amid the squelchy synths of ‘Sun Come Up’. It’s an irresistible stomper.

Sure, there’s melancholy. ‘Sad Banger’ pays tribute to a legion of heartbreak-fuelled disco classics, ‘Golden Hour’ is a soulful salute to bittersweet holiday romance. But the clouds quickly disperse, and keen gardeners will even applaud ‘Summery’ with its rare lyrical nod to the heady scent of the ceanothus flower. “You’re the blue glow in the brightest sky,” sings McAlmont, as Dickson summons a barmy army of sun-baked Balearic beats and drizzly old winter suddenly feels like an impossibly distant memory.

Album available here:
https://plastiquerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/daylight-2

ORBURY COMMON
Sylvan Chute
(PRAH)

“A musical map of abstract melodramas” is how Emlyn Bainbridge and Josh Day-Jones describe this terrific debut album, and you certainly can’t fault their ambition. There are folk guitars, pulsating beats, spiralling choirs… and that’s just on opening track ‘Golden Time’. Frequently sounding like The Beta Band conducting some appalling arcane ritual, the duo encapsulate this beguilingly strange world on the bafflingly brilliant ‘Jaundice And The Pipermen’. “I thought I saw a dog in a car / And then I saw a dog in a car / A coincidence which shakes you to the core”. Quite.

Album available here:
https://orburycommon.bandcamp.com/album/sylvan-chute

BEN UNDERWOOD
Outdoor Work
(Woodford Halse)

“I can still vividly see the plastic beads from the red, yellow and green stained glass windows and the blue Alice bands that we glued together night after night,” explains Sheffield’s Ben Underwood. The title of this delicate collection comes from the outsourced local factory work his mum once undertook, and – following her death – he poured these childhood memories into a series of wistfully jazzy guitar improvisations. ‘A Pink Sun Sets’ is gently elegiac, ‘Superkings’ hints at working class steel, and the closing ‘Bev’ is a playfully minimalist homage to a clearly indomitable woman.

Album available here:
https://woodfordhalse.bandcamp.com/album/wf-89-outdoor-work

TYMON DOGG AND THE DACOITS
The Granada Sessions
(Tiny Global)

Punk-psych polymath Tymon Dogg and one-time PiL drummer Richard Dudanski were both members of Joe Strummer’s pre-Clash band The 101’ers, and now decamp to Strummer’s beloved southern Spain to create this thrillingly eclectic album. So ‘The Wheel Of Life And Death’ is an urgent, violin-led stomp, whereas ‘Cruel Mind’ is a Hammond-heavy lament at the rise of the Far Right. The highlight, though? Closing track ‘The Turning Of The World’, a soulful shrug worthy of Dexy’s Midnight Runners, with Dogg somehow managing to sound both defeated and defiant.

Album available here:
https://tymondoggthedacoits.bandcamp.com/album/the-granada-sessions

RON GEESIN
Basic Maths
(Trunk)

Take a forgotten ITV Schools programme from 1980, then add psychedelic electro pioneer Ron Geesin. What does that equal? Why, this charming collection of wobbly synth cues, composed by the impish Geesin to soundtrack the number-based antics of one-time Play School presenter Fred Harris. From the unsettling ambience of ‘Soft Mirrors’ to the jolly plod of ‘Old Seagull And Chips’, it’s a heartwarming testament to Geesin’s sense of musical mischief, and only slightly triggering to those of us still suffering flashbacks to the traumas of long division.

Album available here:
https://www.strangerthanparadiserecords.com/ron-geesin-basic-maths.html?srsltid=AfmBOop3g1Zb4pACNyV0l_bOpDle-0TVMYgkdekbBlTJRfBRcRNbM_MW

PULSE: DIMITRI

Who he?

Enigmatic South Yorkshire synthpop maestro whose brilliant new EP Probably A Metaphor is a distinct gear change from his former calling as a nightclub impressario.

“DIMITRI’S was just off Junction 33 on the M1 motorway,” he explains. “It has been up for sale for five years now, so please get in touch if you know anyone who needs to buy a nightclub. Other business ventures have included DIMA, a lifestyle scent, and DIMILKREM, a caffeinated, alcoholic, milk drink. DIMILKREM is still available to purchase in bulk from my warehouse. I say warehouse, it used to be a nightclub.”

Why DIMITRI?

“The songs of DIMITRI were created as adverts for my products,” he says. “But people seemed to enjoy the music more than the products, and I realised I could use music to give people messages and make them happy.”

Said messages include ‘My Blessed Device’, a Cabaret Voltaire-esque paean to the tribulations of modern technology. “Spellchecking is great for e-communicating with people,” muses DIMITRI. “However, I am very amused by how a machine can correct you over spelling, as words are made up. If I want to spell a word a certain way, they should let me.”

Tell us more…

The EP’s closing track, ‘Yes To An Antique Ghost Reading’, sounds like mid-1980s Depeche Mode playing a Bontempi keyboard around a battered ouija board.

“It was created to perform séances to,” he claims. “At DIMITRI live shows, the audience is encouraged to bring an item related to a deceased loved one and, with their permission, I attempt to contact the departed through the item. The music helps me enter a trancelike state which has been scientifically proven to help with clairvoyance.”