Don't sleep people!!!
This album kicks major MAJOR ass!!!
Easily one of the best this year.....below is a few reviews....
http://www.metro.co.uk/music/829584-min ... erly-funky
5 Stars Out Of 5
Manchester 1979: fired up among the debris of punk and intoxicated by the grooves of US funk, A Certain Ratio signed to Factory Records and refined a sound that would influence everyone from New Order to LCD Soundsystem.
Come 2010, their sound unaltered, ACR have produced an album that’s as fresh and vital as any of their worshippers’ output.
Theirs is a lean funk, spiked with Wire-y guitars and not afraid of industrial clanks, dry Mancunian wit or anything else that comes to hand.
It is also properly funky. Which Is Reality? shifts Shaft to Hulme while Starlight takes a space disco trip enhanced by Denise ‘Screamadelica’ Johnson’s lungs.
Teri elopes into Northern dream pop as effortlessly as Very Busy Man runs riot with samba, dub and swirling Eastern horns. Mind Made Up is a record to get or risk losing your edge.
A triumph!
http://www.allgigs.co.uk/view/review/48 ... eview.html
Having seen ACR wheel out most of this album 'live' over the past 12 months in various venues (London, Brussels and Brighton), I have come to the conclusion that this is a rather posthumous review, especially since this collection first saw the light of day in early 2009 on a small French label. LTM has sprung to the rescue again, offering up less fancy-packaging, new photos and an extra dub re-fix of the albums's opening gambit, "I Feel Light". Tell you what - The dub mix sounds a treat when played as the first track, followed by the standard vocal version, ooh yeah.
2010 and A Certain Ratio are STILL not selling more albums than Madonna - why? Don't look at me like I've just stepped off the Jupiter-shuttle, I'm serious. This is seriously dirty filthy funk and I want to jack it up all night. "I Feel Light" is a hark-back to the days of "To Each" (the Martin Hannett-produced debut album) and "Do The Du" (the early Hannett-produced EP), which is all very ironic considering the same band dispensed with Hannett's services, claiming that he "took all the funk out of us". I disagree - he gave them a new funk, a special funk - a certain funk. Much of this excellent album sounds like his eccentric and testy studio-practices have rubbed off, just a little. The album 'feels' very 'live', but very, very tight and with some nods to their influences (Brasil-funk, samba, NY-noise, Barrio and themselves).
There isn't a filler track on here - "Everything Is Good", "Teri", "Bird To The Ground" and the title track cry out to be spread all over BBC6 Music - I might just walk round to their studios and toss a copy of this CD onto someone's desk and say, "play it - now". All the trademarks from early Factory (and the best A&M-era) releases are present - snakey rhythms, confident vocals and seriously good breaks. "Teri" is apparently a very early song from "Sextet" sessions, so quite how this never got an airing until now I'll never know - it IS a stormer. I wish they'd play it live.
Only "Way To Escape" falls short of the high-standard on here - it's just OK - but the rest, including a "Sextet" track, "Rialto" with a spacey-makeover, flicks switches and clicks metatarsals very nicely thank you. Just keep it away from England's world-cup squad.
Paul Pledger
DEVASTATING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
