By the time I was aware of this one having existed, I could no longer afford a copy so thankfully it's been reissued. I liked Blancmange a lot, although they seemed to work better as a singles band than at album length; and naturally I've always wondered about this formative obscurity reputedly recorded using pots and pans for percussion.
Typically for such a shining example of the is it supposed to sound like that? genre, it came in the mail just as the needle of my turntable picked up a lump of ominous gunk which somehow remained invisible to the naked eye, making the record sound as though my stylus might be fucked; and I played it at 45RPM, which is the wrong speed, although most of the vocals have been slowed down on the original portastudio recording, so everything except the voice had me wondering whether it was supposed to sound like that? Then, having cleaned the needle and bothered to look at the cover - which recommends 33RPM more or less as a serving suggestion - I got to hear the thing as intended, roughly speaking, and it seems it is supposed to sound like that.
It's an understatement to say Irene & Mavis is a far cry from the shiny synth pop to come being as it sounds like something from the median point between the Residents and Nurse with Wound. Those pots and pans were just for starters. Percussion could be anything from the aforementioned to someone thumping a wardrobe, the vocals are all recorded at double speed, and there's some apparent pleasure taken in tape distortion, wow and flutter and the like, which I'm fairly sure was deliberate. Even so, we nevertheless have plaintive tunes which quite clearly foreshadow Sad Day and I've Seen the Word drifting here and there, additionally evoking the melancholia of Eno's earlier ambient jobbies and inventing vapourwave on Holiday Camp even as those eventually sampled by Vektroid and her pals were still in short trousers.
I could stand to hear a lot more of this version of Blancmange.
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