Cosey Fanni Tutti - 2t2 (2025)

 

Here's another Cosey solo, not radically different to Tutti but representing further goodness mined from the same seam; although it brings new realisations, namely that on reflection I think I prefer her solo work to anything recorded with him indoors, or even with that other group. I'm not even sure why this should be, for clearly it's a relative. Another realisation is that both 2t2 and its predecessor seem sonically closer to the very first Chris & Cosey outings than to the later, which may be to do with either a reinvestment in gritty analogue sounds or the renewed spirit of adventure which comes with endeavours beyond a familiar configuration of people. A lot of it chugs along at some halfway point between Gristle and Moroder, as much a bubbling bass as a rhythm. With Wrangler and countless others, the last decade or so has seen a revival in what I'd hesitate to call sounds of the seventies, harking back to those early experiments with plug-in synths grinding away, and so it is with Cosey's work. In most cases, and certainly this one, it doesn't strike me as an exercise in nostalgia so much as a reflection of changing music technology thankfully losing its fixation with the new, instead favouring variety and malleability in terms of sound design.

Anyway, while solo Cosey makes great use of rhythm, it's a different emphasis to that favoured by hubby and is more exploratory, hence the continued delight in things which make a noise for their own sake - the cornet and even a harmonica on this album. I gather these pieces were composed for some kind of installation, which I can see given that they have the quality of soundtrack, a certain cinematic scale wherein even the atonal elements gain musicality by contrast with adjacent sounds. It suggests improvisation and random juxtaposition but for the fact that everything works and complements the whole, so maybe there's an element of selection. Whatever the case may be, it's at least as powerful as weather in its emotional impact - an album in which to lose yourself.

Shameful Ca$hin (2025)

 

Shameful Ca$hin began life as a conflation of the Girl Guided Missiles  - whom you may recall from here - and some former Cravats, specifically the formative line up of the same - although one of the four has strummed and bellowed in both groups. They got together for fun and for the joy of playing pubs. They didn't have a name and so for a while it was Cravats 2 or '77 Cravats for the sake of flyers, and because their repertoire incorporated Precinct, Shut Up, Pressure Sellers, Crash Barrier Dancer and others forged by that very first line up - alongside a few newies. The  Cravats hadn't existed as the Cravats for a couple of decades by that point so it didn't seem conspicuously cheeky until a reformed version coalesced with new material and someone from their label denounced the undertaking as a shameful cash in in the comments box of a live performance posted on YouTube. Legitimately peeved, the lads decided, We're having that! and thus was Shameful Ca$hin born.

Inevitably, the new numbers began to crowd out the resurrected material until there was enough for an album - a proper album on two sides of vinyl like nature intended, just as it was in the good old days, or at least the marginally less fucking stupid days. I've known Martin, guitarist and vocalist, for many years. He played me this album at his flat when I dropped by back in 2024. I was blown away. It was melodic, powerfully muscular, distinctly shirty without getting so angry as to lose the plot. It felt like hearing the Stranglers or Sham 69 for the first time and I was excited to learn they were planning a vinyl release.

Nothing seemed to happen for a while and then it appeared on Bandcamp. I downloaded and listened once but couldn't quite square what I heard sat at my PC with what I'd heard at Martin's place; but now that the vinyl has appeared I realise this may be something to do with either MP3 files or just the superior sound of music blasting from proper speakers. In keeping with the Girl Guided Missiles having been one of the few bands to form due to musical differences, as the legend has it, Shameful Ca$hin are musically all over the place, and yet so tight and so confident that it takes a while for the ears to register abrupt segues into tangential detours such as country and western. It's because this is what bands used to do rather than simply churning out a dozen versions of the same song, lest we've somehow forgotten Led Zeppelin's brief dalliance with reggae. The thing you notice, the first thing that hits you is the sheer driven power of the music - a motorbike beat even if that isn't exactly what they're playing. There are touches of the Who, the Clash, the Dolls, the Stones, others you may not even recognise, and Nowhere Fast could have been the greatest song Eddie & the Hot Rods never got around to recording, hitting you in the chest with the same apocalyptic pathos as Beginning of the End; but the album is nevertheless very much its own thing, distinguished more by its differences than whatever comparisons might be made. This is particularly true lyrically because, let's not deny it, none of us are getting any younger, and Shameful Ca$hin speak to me as a person of equivalent vintage in addressing that which troubles them without giving too much of a shit about appealing to anyone but themselves, which is as it should be. Thus they skewer pretty much everything that's wrong with the world right now, not least that it didn't used to be quite so fucking ridiculous back when we were all in short trousers; and they do it with wit, cracking tunes, and air-punching hooks.

Just when you think it's all over, this comes along. I'm not claiming that the Shameful Ca$hin album rocks more than anything has rocked before, but it's certainly in the running.

Get it here before they're all gone.

The LOX - Filthy America… It's Beautiful (2016)

 

I've been waiting twenty-five years for a follow up to We Are The Streets so it was kind of embarrassing to discover that there was one and it came out nearly a decade ago. This sort of thing becomes unfortunately bewildering once you're past fifty.

Anyway, it's not like there's been a shortage of LOX material given all three of them having churned out a succession of mostly incredible solo albums, each one invariably featuring the other two, notably After Taxes and A Gangster and a Gentleman which are both up there with Streets to my ears; but there's a certain grisly magic you only get in full with the three of them on an equal footing - the only three-man group where all of 'em is the strongest, as it says on here. Fifteen years after the previous group effort, the favoured sound hasn't really changed so much as expanded with the times. We still have the familiar glacial New York beats, and the inevitably sterling contribution of DJ Premier, but there are a couple which border on trap, notably Secure the Bag featuring Gucci Mane, without quite going the full sweaty distance to sound like they turned up on the album by accident. Mostly the beats stay minimal, grooves more than tunes but expertly tooled so even the moody minimalism sounds cinematic on What Else You Need to Know and others; and the beats stay minimal because that's really all you need. Few rap groups have even one guy who can weave a saga with the level of detail you get on this album, and the LOX have three. You could strip it all down to acapella and it might lose some of the force but it would still kick your ass. This is one of those that taps right into the core of rap, and what rap has always been. It's not always pretty and yet it remains both majestic and magnificent from start to finish. It was worth the wait.