Can I still be davie?

Moto likes Ezio (or was it Moot?).  I forgot about the search function.  Would've been easier to find without Assassin's Creed getting in the way.

I've rejigged the order in the OP, Roujin gets this Friday as unfortunately the iron is hot for his choice, then pop on 01/03, then Jon then mee.  Any more?

I think his baby mama too. Although that may have just been OD.

Ha, well remembered, I was supposed to send a reminder.

Bump. Today for cadet.

Yeah I can see what you mean about Joe Buddon thing, a lot of that track is name checking other artists tracks as lyrics, so "I'll run a man down like Joe Budden" is presumably referencing Man Down by JB. 

Closure does get a bit red pill-ish at the end I will concede haha. 

Glad you enjoyed though face, Stereotype is a quality track. 

Moot add me to the back of the rotation pls, I'm absolutely going to drop some more UK guys in this thread in the future.

Man can only leng down bars over what he's given I'm afraid unless he's doing the beats himself.

*eyes the JME and Wiley playlists*

I’ve been quiet in the thread, but I’ve really enjoyed both playlists so far. Kinda feel like I haven’t given them enough repeat listens to give any serious comment, but I’m intrigued that there’s a common thread running through the two – very personal, introspective, intelligent bars laid over gentle, almost pastoral, beats. Two artists clearly from different worlds but with some similar basic influences and goals.

poprock wrote:

I’ve been quiet in the thread, but I’ve really enjoyed both playlists so far. Kinda feel like I haven’t given them enough repeat listens to give any serious comment, but I’m intrigued that there’s a common thread running through the two – very personal, introspective, intelligent bars laid over gentle, almost pastoral, beats. Two artists clearly from different worlds but with some similar basic influences and goals.

I guess me and Face like to feel she kind of way from time to time when listening to music.

I really enjoy anything that can illicit any emotional response and I guess in the case of hip hop/rap whatever that often these kinds of songs seem to come directly at you in a way that I don't think you quite get in other genres where the verses tend to be shorter and lyrics are often more abstract with use of metaphor and smilie rather than a stream of consciousness. I'm not saying that's a bad thing either, Black by Pearl Jam and Like a Stone by Audioslave are some of my favourite tunes ever.

Yeah i do babies first dabble in country occasionally. Jolene is a banger. Obvs that's the worst kind of take for country fans to hear and I apologise and I know I'm a pleb in the country game.

I did like take me home country roads from way back though before Bethesda ruined it. Again, that is not a take for the country fans. Once again, apologies.

Jolene transcends genres. It’s for everyone, not just country fans.

Yes you can Moot.

It's done.

I spent more time deciding what band I wanted to talk about here than I did actually writing it. I wanted to pull away from the hip-hop trend, and pick out something a bit older – a band whose story is finished already, with a start, middle and end. So here you go – Compulsion. Irish grunge punks from the mid-’90s. A bit of an undiscovered gem and consistently one of the best live acts I ever saw.

Compulsion

I first discovered Compulsion at Hull University Students Union, in 1994. I must have been 17. Underage and underprepared, I’d gone along with a schoolmate to see my favourite band – Pop Will Eat Itself – on the Almagamation tour. We had the usual underage nerves – will we get knocked back at the door? – but it turned out we knew one of the bouncers from playing volleyball together. We were fine. The place was rammed. The merch stall was the first thing we saw – and this was the golden age of band merch. The stall was crushed and crowded beneath a pile of punters desperate to get their hands on the latest PWEI shirts. The other bands on the bill were racing to keep up and get a bit of that lovely extra cash. And WHAT a lineup. Fuck your bands who tour with one support plus a local band. This was five great bands all on tour together, despite the small venues. PWEI, Compulsion, Blaggers ITA, Ash, and Headless Chickens. I didn’t know that at the time. I’d only heard of PWEI. Headless Chickens excepted though, this lot turned out to be some of my favourite bands of the ’90s.

Compulsion were the biggest surprise. A proper shock to the system. They blended punk and grunge with massive pop hooks and they were magnetic on stage. Compulsion were the first band I saw live who were openly confrontational. They weren’t partying with the audience, they were daring you not to like them. Staring you out. Attacking. Every riff, every shout, every barbed lyric – Compulsion were battling something, and the audience’s job was to fucking well pay attention. There was scaffolding around the drumkit because it turned out the singer, Josephmary, liked to climb on top of the drums to better shout and scream at the audience. Getting the advantage of ground.

I saw a lot of great live bands in the mid to late ’90s, but not many of them really cut it on record. Not many of them have stayed with me, in heavy rotation on my hi-fi, all the way through to the present day. Compulsion have. They never ‘made it’ – they were never mainstream famous. I think that combo – being tight, angry, catchy and well-produced, but still being a bit underground – has kept them cool. They’re still a proper alternative band.

Compulsion were a four-piece from Dublin. So there was Josephmary on vocals (they memorably sold T-shirts emblazoned with ‘JOSEPHMARY SINGS LIKE A MOCKINGBIRD’), real name Joey Barry. Sid Rainey on guitar. The two of them had been in a couple of previous bands together. They were joined by Garret Lee on bass (more on him later) and Dutch drummer Jan-Willem Alkema.

In the early ’90s Compulsion moved to London and released a few EPs on One Little Indian. Compulsion, Casserole, and Safety – which was long enough to almost be an album. Their first proper album, Comforter, was supposed to break them in America … but things started to go awry. They were signed to Elektra for the US, but they broke contract and jumped to Interscope for a better deal at the last minute – Jimmy Iovine had heard their stuff and promised he could make them stars. So they were caught up in legal wrangling before the record even came out. They made a $100,000 video for the lead single, Mall Monarchy … which MTV then rejected. On the plus side, Courtney Love was an outspoken fan. She called Compulsion ‘the best girl band in the world – if only they were girls’. And there definitely was a musical parallel between Hole and Compulsion. Indie/rock DJs back here in the UK often played them back to back.

Comforter came out in 1994, and Compulsion followed it up with two singles – Mall Monarchy and Basketcase. Totally fair, they were probably the strongest choices from the record. Both have immediate hooks. Their second album, The Future is Medium, saw a bit of an evolution. Compulsion added electronics to their sound – samples, synth stabs, skittering keyboard lines wrapping around the guitars – and it really did take them up a step. They went for a deliberate image change too – matching orange hair dye and plain black T-shirts. A bit of a Kraftwerk-go-punk vibe, and all part of a concerted anti-capitalist or anti-establishment or just anti-fucking-something ethos. Again, two singles were pulled from it – Question Time for the Proles and Juvenile Scene Detective.

You can see that Compulsion were heading up their own arse a bit by this point. The songs were the same – catchy, angry, adrenaline-fuelled takes on the midpoint between grunge and punk – but the song titles were getting longer and more pretentious, and they didn’t have the star power of the Manics to push that pseudo-intellectualism into the mainstream. They packed it in soon after.

I mentioned their bass player, Garret Lee, earlier. He’s gone on to big things. He’s put out three excellent electronic albums under the name Jacknife Lee, which slotted right into the big beat era – recommended for fans of Fatboy Slim, Skint Records, etc. But he’s really hit the big time as a producer, working with U2, REM, Eminem, Pink, Snow Patrol, The Killers, Bloc Party, Weezer, and even Taylor Fucking Swift. Hell yeah.

So that’s all the chat. Here’s some songs. Please excuse the quality here – the mid-’90s were low-res. These are the songs I could find on YouTube. Not necessarily the ones I’d pick as favourites.







If you want my recommendations … grab yourself the special edition rerelease of Comforter. It’s a two-disc effort with the original album as one CD and the best bits of their previous EPs pulled together on disc two. highlights for me are Rapejacket, Air-raid for the Neighbours, and Yabba Yabba Yes Yes Yes. But the big one is definitely Rapejacket. I fucking love that song. And, for a tangent, look up Jacknife Lee’s solo stuff and start with 1970s Dictator Chic and Bursting Off the Backbeat.