Stephen Mallinder - Tick Tick Tick (2022)

I'm almost not sure what to say about this one. He's been at it for nearly five decades, yet continues to put out first class albums which build on what has gone before without sounding like a retread - always breaking new ground; and Tick Tick Tick substantially develops even on Um Dada from 2019. We're back with smooth electric disco, for want of a better term, but where previous efforts with Wrangler and Cabaret Voltaire have been, if not quite dark, certainly tinged with paranoia, Tick Tick Tick sounds kind of happy. Of course, the equipment used brings with it trace elements of acid, techno, handbag house, hardbag, or whatever the fuck they were calling it that year, but more than anything it puts me in mind of some of the weirder extended disco workouts from the likes of the Gap Band and others. Should it even need stating, it seems fair to say that the James Brown influence really wasn't just something with which to freak out all those conservative punk rockers and industrial music trainspotters. Hush seems to be the standout track with its haunting sample of what sounds like a wonky old tape of something orchestral, but it's very much a close run race. If all music was this good we'd be fucked because you'd never know what to listen to next; and talking of matters next, if whatever follows improves on this, I really won't know what to say and may have to resort to expressive dance.

What a time to be alive!

Wrangler - A Situation (2020)

It's unfortunately difficult to discuss Wrangler without at least thinking about Cabaret Voltaire, which seems potentially insulting to the two of them who aren't Stephen Mallinder; although for what it's worth, Mallinder's vocals and what he does with them are pretty distinctive, pretty difficult to mistake for those of anyone else, which is impressive given that his lyrics are more like serving suggestions, loaded images delivered in the same couple of bluesy notes which have seen him so well through these past four or five decades. He doesn't do a whole lot in terms of vocal acrobatics, but he's never needed to.

Musically, Wrangler feel like an outgrowth of Cabaret Voltaire, specifically from the shock of the clean sound where sequencers and electric pings replaced fuzzed guitar and flanged clarinet; and, of course, it's also a factor that what we have here are extended grooves rather than songs in the traditional sense.

Nevertheless, three albums in and Wrangler is beginning to feel very much its own entity regardless of historical detail. I'm told they use only analogue equipment, or at least analogue synths. I don't know whether this is true, or to what extent, and there are at least a couple of vocal burps which sounded somewhat sampled to me, but it feels organic, a jazzy groove which just happens to come out in bleeps, bloops and acid squelch. In fact, A Situation is funky in terms which Cabaret Voltaire never quite managed, despite the house phase, like an Asimov rewrite of the Gap Band and the like. The odd thing, at least at first, is how this one seems so much less immediate than the previous two, which is down, I suppose, to its ten tracks taking the form of tight rhythmic jams more than anything too reliant on hooks or a chorus; but three or four plays and it's tugging at your sleeve, pulling you out onto the dance floor, and no-one is going home just yet. I know it's not all Mallinder, but nevertheless it's hard not to marvel at the man and his career, that he should be involved in something of such magnificence some forty years since Voice of America and Mix-Up. I'm beginning to think we should consider an annual National Stephen Mallinder Day.