IT'S a bit of a mixed bag this week, starting off with an excellent album from a little known outfit called Moodswings. Live At Leeds (Arista), at the Back To Basics Club to be precise, is an excellent example of just what can be achieved with synthesisers and a lot of creativity.
This isn't acid house (although it has elements of it) and it isn't Eurobeat (although useful things have been taken from that, too). It is an urgent, pulsating blend of Latin rhythms, absurdly grandiose samples of massed choirs, classic '70s synthesiser sounds (the CD insert shows the band's keyboard player playing some real dinosaurs) and very trendy sound bites. The nine-minute Live Longer contains most of Martin Luther King's famous 'I have a dream' speech.
There is an incredible amount of energy in this music and, as ever, the live performance adds to this synthetic sound feast. The crowd at Back To Basics feeds off Moodswings' great verve and the atmosphere, even on a CD, becomes electric. This is the best thing to come out of a synthesiser band since Depeche Mode's excellent 101 and contains such a degree of creativity that it will remain interesting after any number of plays. Don't miss this one.
Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, Malcolm McClaren has risen from the dead, again. This time he embarrasses himself with an album about trendy Frenchness. An inveterate bandwagon jumper, McClaren has attempted to leap on board the jazz revival with his excruciatingly pretentious album Paris (Vogue Records).
How pretentious? This was taken off the back cover: 'This collection of songs attempts to inscribe a map of feelings over this jazz-drenched city of Paris. A city where I have often been lost in a daydream, listening to Eric Satie, Art Blakey and Serge Gainsbourg. Some of their blood and smells remain.' It wouldn't be at all surprising if some of Gainsbourg's smells remain but I was led to believe that Satie and Blakey had reasonable personal hygiene.
Sadly, the nonsense on the back cover compares rather favourably to the ditherings on the CD itself. McClaren delivers his 'poetry' over some of the worst imitation jazz you could ever hope to hear in that annoying nasal drawl of his. To make matters worse, he then persuades Catherine Deneuve, Francoise Hardy and Amina to join the sinking ship. Ladies of their experience and class should really know better.
