Press Reviews - there goes concorde again...

WIRE... March 2002

Careless Talk Costs Lives ... March 2002

The Times (PLAY Magazine)... 9th -15th Feb. 2002

Q Magazine ... Feb. 2002

The Brain Farm...

I'm having breakfast with a couple of my flatmates. Boiled eggs. The postman comes. And 'There Goes Concorde Again' is flung through the letter box. On the stereo it goes. We play the first track, Mr Magic, and then we play it again. And again. Egg unfinished, track two not yet listened to, I take it over to fellow BrainFarm hack Nico's gaff. And he loves it, as do his flatmates. We listen to it all day, and all the next day. It's ridiculously catchy. Every bit of it. It features Clem Curtis and the Foundations doing a wonderful old town soul style chorus and a beautiful vocal from Native Hipster Nanette telling a lovely story about a naked men and women and woodpiles. Oh yes Mr Magic is a classic, but is also a shot in the proverbial foot because it took me two days to actually get past the brilliance of track one.

Once I did I came to a song about a baboon climbing a mountain. It was called Baboon Climbs the Mountain. It kinds of sounds like a schizophrenics day trip to the fairground. Which is a good thing.

The tracks then begins to swing into dark electronica combined with crazy vocal collage work. Little dark poems with avant guitar work in parts. Which is cool. The listener is just getting used to that, when Spike Milligan starts singing. Yes the former Goon is present here singing away and melancholic pick-up line.

From there on it carries on it's sweet and crazy little way, complete with Shakespeare quotes, keep-fit work outs, tirades against Bob Monkhouse and even a drum solo. This is both anarchic sound-art electronica and pop, at the same time. So good. The industrial tunes are harsh, the pop tunes are catchy, the ambient tunes are caressing, the guitars are spot on.

This is the kind of record that makes you pleased to be alive and hearing.

by Oli Basciano - 9 out of 10

Amazon.co.uk (official review)

There Goes Concorde Again is accurately described
by the Native Hipsters head honcho William Wilding as
"a collection of stuff (music/noises/words), recorded with
various people at various times between 1979 and 2001".

A bona fide lo-fi, punk-rock, cottage-industry product it was recorded in a living room and released on the Native Hipsters own label. Five hundred 7" singles were printed up with the band rubber-stamping each label individually and Blue Petering the covers by cutting up humungous hoarding posters of Kevin Keegan. If you think that's bizarre, wait until you hear the record itself. Fundamentally, it consists of female vocalist (in the loosest sense) Blatt, vacantly intoning a mundane monologue, "Outside fat woman struggle up the hill", accompanied by banana-finger bass plodding and random shards of noise. Apparently, the idea was that the guitars sounded like chickens pecking up grain. Hmm. The overall vibe is of The Fall soundtracking a surreal kitchen-sink drama co-starring Salvador Dali and Rita Tushingham. Yes, that blimmin' marvellous. The fact that there are another 16 similarly bonkers tracks means that There Goes Concorde Again is pure genius.

--Chris King

+++++++++++++++++

Amazon.co.uk - Customer Review

If you liked "Concorde" you're going to absolutely love this,
26 January, 2002
Reviewer: ( jaf@jafsoft.com ) from Stockport, UK

It's the oldest of cliches to say they don't make 'em like this any more, but the plain truth is that they all too rarely made them like this then either.

This CD collects together 6 tracks taken from the 3 singles released in the early 80's by "...and the Native Hipsters" (the band's full title) together with another 12 gems which have remained criminally unreleased for 20 years. Rumour has it there's more of this, as well... On the band's UK web site there's talk of plans to release more (and even new) material.

It's impossible to simply describe the band's sound, as it varies so much from track to track. The diversity shown here is truly staggering, from the insistent horns and rhythm that drive forward the story of "Poor Prince"; the cheery singalong of "Mr Magic"; the mildly disturbing backing to "Tenderly Hurt me"; to the classic minimalism of "There goes Concorde again" itself.

The band's core is William (music) and Blatt (vocals), with a wide selection of musicians dropping by to lend a hand. There are too many to list here, but if I mention David Cunningham - who worked with the Flying Lizards around the same time - this might give a loose pointer to where the band are coming from. The instruments used seem to be anything and everything that could add to the party. While no kitchen sink is credited, there *is* a "typewriter solo" in the middle of the title track.

While most of the songs are centred round Blatt's vocals, "Middle of the Road Rage" features the Wandsworth Council Highways Department on pneumatic drills and William - on harmonica. The drills were recorded through "the very window that Blatt saw Concorde through". If you've never heard truly musical pneumatic drills, here's your chance. If you've never wanted to, then shame on you :-)

Added to the mix on other tracks by William are various "noises". William was happy to use anything and everything that came to hand. In 1980 the 7" release of "There goes Concorde again" included a snippet of sheet music with a request to record it and send the results to the band for possible inclusion in a future project. Sadly it's unknown if this ever happened. The band's web site mentions that "Larry's coming back" was - years before sampling - to have been based on Ska record, but afraid of legal consequences the record company cried off.

While the music varies from track to track, the one thing that is common to most of them ("Middle of the Road Rage" is an instrumental :-) is Blatt's vocals. Not that Blatt's singing is easily categorized either. Her distinctive vocals give each word and phrase a wide-eyed and unique charm. This is most obvious in the title track whose chorus consists of repeating the phrase "There goes Concorde again", but in Blatt's hands each repetition is given a character and emphasis of it's own.

And the songs themselves tell so many stories. "Poor prince" is the tale of an Alsatian left unfed for days (the chorus "who will feed poor Prince?" takes on a much darker meaning towards the end). "Stuck" tells the story of someone who stuck their head through some railings and is "quite well held". In an old Melody Maker interview the band revealed this song contains a number of odd phrases that Blatt came out with in conversation including "don't believe in the Fire Brigade".

Among the "new" songs my favourite is the "Story of two twins" in which Blatt makes up a story as she goes along (to the increased amusement of the musicians in the background). The tale ends up with a bus driven by two twins crashing into the Thames, floating downstream and then breaking the Thames Barrier "the pride of London that has just worked once and proved its worth". While Blatt increasingly struggles to maintain her composure, the musicians in the background openly crack up. As did I :-)

"Mr Magic" - another new song - is as simple and as near to "pop" as the Hipsters ever got. In happier times this would make a good single.

This CD is being released by the band at a bargain price. Only the un-curious amongst you have any excuse for not buying this record, and if you've read this far through the review, then why not treat yourself to one of the most diverse and entertaining releases of the last 20 years.

OTHER LINKS

Rough Trade
Rough Trade records web site

Weirdsville.com
Internet Radio station that has the entire "tgca" CD on it's playlist.
ALTERNATIVELY, Click the following link
to access the RealAudio file without visiting the web site
Weirdsville.com - ARTCAST

WFMU New York City radio station
Internet Radio station that has tracks from the "tgca" CD on it's playlist.

BBC Radio3 / Late Junction
Radio 3 programme that has played Mr. Magic.

ArtRocker
Alternative Music ezine

dotComedy
Woody Bop Muddy, The Officials (comedy referees) and more...

Concorde
British Airways Concorde pages.