BMX Bandits – Duglas Stewart’s Frankenstein / Age Of Chance – BBC Sessions 85-87 / The Fizzbombs – Janice Long Session 01.07.87

Precious Recordings

Whilst Precious Recordings could quite understandably have taken the rest of this year off to bask in the warm glow of the sublime and still-fresh debut mini-LP from Coup Dur, it’s back to core archival business once again with three further releases, albeit with a few novel twists in the tale.

The main twist being a ‘director’s cut’ album reissue leading the latest fleet of wares. Previously a lost 1996 Vinyl Japan-dispensed CD, Duglas Stewart’s Frankenstein has been rebilled more accurately as an official BMX Bandits affair instead of a Duglus T Stewart solo offering and pressed to vinyl for the first time. Capturing the long-running loose-knit enterprise at its most communal and low-tech, with an abundance of covers and a wide coterie of the extended family in the densely packed credits, this now-expanded-to-seventeen-tracks hodgepodge is a subtly revelatory rediscovery.

Featuring reliable contributions from Norman Blake, Francis MacDonald, Bill Wells and many others, the collection wanders through Stewart’s eclectic and egoless routings which — as openly declared in the sleeve notes — owe no small debt to Brian Wilson’s recently anthologised Beach Boys Love You and Adult / Child era.

Whilst there is some inevitable unevenness – notably exemplified with a few jarringly wonky interlude passages – there are plenty of charming moments cut into the grooves. Therefore, amongst the self-composed numbers you will find a pair of bittersweet Burt Bacharach-on-a-budget ballads (“Stupid” and “Airmail”); a stark one-man a capella detour from Stewart (“Very”) and a ramshackle warming group singalong (“Slow Fade”).

Amongst the reinterpretative wares, there are lots of understated pleasures to unearth to boot. These include a sublimely intimate take on the Benmont Tench-penned “Unbreakable Heart”; an evocative dubby makeover of Walter Schumann’s “Into The Moon” with lead vocals from The Pastels’ Katrina Mitchell; a hushed cocktail jazz shimmy through Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”; and a languid murmured ramble through Randy Newman’s “Snow”.

Possessing the persuasive qualities of a mix-tape compiled by a discerning — if occasionally off-piste — music lover, this widened edition of Duglas Stewart’s Frankenstein is a curious and welcome addition to the Precious canon.

Returning to more staple Precious history retelling, by way of the BBC’s radio session archives, appear two contrasting excavations.

BBC Sessions 85-87 brings together three Radio 1 sessions — plus two rare period rare singles and their accompanying B sides for bonus good measure — from the Leeds-birthed Age Of Chance. The work of an uncompromising quartet, in thrall as much to blistering post-punk and as nascent hip-hop, this round-up is very much one for the Marmite section of the Precious label catalogue – alongside the likes of bIG*fLAME and Cuban Boys.

Persistence is worthwhile though, with the four-song 1985 John Peel session portion imagining a bracingly rowdy wrestling match between The Fall and The Birthday Party. Elsewhere, a particularly raw stomped-over reading of Prince’s “Kiss” from the subsequent year’s repeat commission stands up well too, as does the snaking bar-room rockabilly of “Hold On” and the proselytising Pop Will Eat Itself-alike “Shut Up And Listen” from the 1987 Janice Long session.

Even closer to traditional Precious BBC vault raiding terrain is The Fizzbombs’ Janice Long Session 01.07.87. Whilst only clocking in at a total of ten minutes, this four-track document provides a pleasingly scrappy but inventive insight into the fleetingly active ensemble, once populated by sundry members of Secret Goldfish, Shop Assistants and Jesse Garon And The Desperadoes.

Consequently, we’re presented with mutated garage-surf-rock (“Beach Party” and “Blue Summer”) as recorded elsewhere for the group’s 1988’s The Surfin’ Winter EP; the blissfully assured raw-jangle of the otherwise unreleased “It’s Not As Simple As That”; and a joyously multi-segmented makeover of Neil Diamond’s “Cherry, Cherry”.

Vivid and vital nearly forty years after originally being put to tape in tight and reliably fad-free vintage Maida Vale Studios fashion, this is another essential archaeological extraction from Edinburgh’s underground music past.

-Adrian-