Experimental and highly inventive artists Clinic have announced a new album: Wild In The Streets, set for release on October 30th (Domino Records). They have just released a taster in the form of the single, You And I.
At one time with four members, they now consist of duo Ade Blackburn and Jonathan Hartley. Clinic have always marched along their own path regardless of the vagaries of the music world. Indeed this has been a conscious decision: Ade Blackburn has stated “We’ve always run in the opposite direction to what’s happening. So if anything gets too close to sounding like something else, then we’ll take a different route.”
As a former sub editor at IPC, I have always had a particular affection for the quirky, experimental band. And their live performance at The Trades Club in Hebden Bridge in 2014 was as immersively weird and effective as I had hoped, despite my aversion to artists wearing masks.
The direction of the new work is hinted at by Ade:“Something we’ve got into more recently is exotica, especially the colourful percussion. People like Martin Denny and Les Baxter. Some of that stuff is amazing. For what was often considered easy listening music, it has some very strange undercurrents. We’ve also been listening to dub reggae and things like Cabaret Voltaire. And a lot of early rock‘n’roll, for that immediacy. For many of these songs, we wanted an extra sense of propulsion, so we’d sometimes take out a whole verse to push it along.”
Familiar elements pop up on the new single: the laconic, wonky vocals set against a clash of bleeps and synth plus an eerie, occasionally disturbing, vibe. And where they once denounced my profession in IPC Sub-Editors Dictate Our Youth, in You and I they send up their own as Hartley warbles: “There’s no business like show business like no business I know”.
Tracklist
1. Wild In The Streets
2. Model Citizen
3. Back to Nature
4. You and I
5. Hypnotised
6. The Gardener
7. Mouse Trap
8. Energies
9. (It Was) Heaven
10. The Time Has Come
11. Well Wisher
12. It’s a Pleasure
Wild In The Streets pre-order on DomMart exclusive blue vinyl (w/ art print), standard vinyl, CD and digitally. Pre-order: DomMart | Domino
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