Manchester label Mate don’t just operate as part of the underground, they’re literally buried six feet under their own Mancunian vernacular of sophisticated electronic sleaze.
Both tracks on this split single not only hint at another time, another place and possibly even another planet, they also showcase a side to the city where the canal is never clean that most people would probably have expected to have been long forgotten in London’s Batcave or Amsterdam’s Paradiso sometime towards the back end of 1982.
Opening track ‘A Kiss In The Darkness’ is the work of Finnish one-man project Roger, and sounds like the Pet Shop Boys on a day trip to Hawkings’ abode, where elocution notes and tongue induced fluids are casually swapped without any further ado. If Vangelis were to allow the soundtrack of ‘Blade Runner’ to be re-recorded in a two dimensional, post-modern style, Roger would be the obvious candidates. In day-glo shell suits and marionette face paint of course.
‘Worse Than A Girl’ meanwhile is a return to the original days of death disco in its most devilish format. The Boys Of Scandinavia – basically Roger's Teemu Metsala plus bassist Juhana Lahtinen and Peter Cushing soundalike Tuomo Kuusi – sound like Alien Sex Fiend covering Depeche Mode’s ‘See You’ in the bass key of The White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’. Yes it’s that other dimensional, in that despite the obvious reference points, the fact they merely come and go in cameo fashion makes this a record like nothing you’ve ever heard in your life before. I swear!
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8Dom Gourlay's Score