Let me take you back to 1996. I was but a phresh phaced 17 year old, kickin around Virgin Megastore in Reading, my love affair with electronic music in its early years and still blossoming like a winter rose. I amble over to one of the listening posts and see a cardboard cd case, with a picture of a red latex gardening glove on the front. On closer inspection I see it is a single, by Spooky, entitled “Fingerbobs”. I hadn’t heard of Spooky before, but in my usual search for new and interesting sonic pleasures, I whack on the headfones and
POW!!!.... A wicked mix of crisp electro beats and soft, warm synths and phat, round bass assaults my ears. This was like nothing I’d really heard before. I ignored the other 3 tracks on the single and went and bought it straight away. Luckily the other tracks were just as fresh and phat so that was a bonus.
Fast forward to 1998. One of my friends gets a double cd called “Future Funk”, which is a mix of various totally sweet beaty electro tracks, and in amongst these electronic bon bons, is a tune called “Clank”, by none other than Spooky. This is another spot on number from the ever elusive Spooky, which I was proper chuffed about as I had been searching for some more of their stuff since getting hold of Fingerbobs (which had become one of my most listened to cds).
Fast forward another 8 years to 2006 (Friday just gone in fact). I’m bumming around in Fopp in Reading while my wife does some clothes shopping. I do my usual perusal of the cds in there and lo and behold, I see and album by Spooky – “Gargantuan”. I was incredibly excited, seeing as I had been on the look out for an album by them for years, based on the strength of their other tunes I’d heard - I’ll just reiterate here that Fingerbobs was and still is one of my favourite tunes of all time.
So I get to my car and (much to my wife’s disapproval) crank it so I can give the frequencies that are about to bang on my eardrums the proper justice and……………………………………………………………………………………...….
...A TOTAL LOAD OF GAY, SLOW, AIRY-FAIRY, TRANCEY, 4x4 WANK starts blaring out of my system.
I thought, "I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, and listen on a bit". I did, and it didn’t get any better.
What had happened to the wide, new and inspiring electro beats and melodies that I knew these guys were capable of? Why had they seemingly regressed to what sounds like early 90’s trance? As you can probly guess, I was most disappointed.
Having listened to it again, I can honestly say that my first reaction was one more born out of disappointment than of actual objective musical analysis. The production is just as good as it sounded back then, and the melodies are reasonably pleasing, if a bit cheesey. However, I think the best way to describe this album is “nice”. Nice as is not really anything bad, but nothing too good either. Nice as in, “Hmm, I just did a nice job of putting up that wallpaper” or “The nicest thing about Spring is the lambs”. Conversely, Fingerbobs and Clank were both fucking awesome in my opinion. Fucking awesome as in “God damn that rack of 30 ribs was fucking awesome” or "I often think about how fucking awesome Brittney Skye's tits are" or even “How fucking awesome was the last 36th Chamber venom night? I hope the next one is as fucking awesome”.
So there ya go. Just thought I’d share that one.
Ez.
P.s. If anyone’s interested I’ll put Fingerbobs on megauplaod. I'd do the same for Clank, but I don't have it in digital form.
