One More Grain - Scarborough Fair/ Giriama Wedding

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Brian on Thu 27 Nov, 2008.

Love it when you get a record that's worth buying for the sleeve alone. That's how I feel about One More Grain's cover for 'Scarborough Fair'. Just as super-dooper is the song itself. Sonic drift hovers above and amongst brittle bones of the much loved tune like a marauding UFO spreading tendrils of mind-reshaping mist, whilst the arrangement has an atmospheric lounge jazz feel, but fronted by someone with the vocal style of Phil Oakey (IE Northern and endearingly flat). Then the brass band comes out to play but it all sounds like the aliens have started sucking the song into some kind of sonic vacuum, it sounds kinda beautiful & lulling but ever so slightly disembodied & sinister, like a song you'd compose in a dream. Totally made the Gammon & Sauerkraut classic their own. The flip sounds like Pigbag in space. Percussive punk-funk grooves with a bizarre jazz twist, a bit like an old spy theme performed by a carnival on acid. Great! An entertaining little number on 7" wax courtesy of those lovely Static caravan maniacs.

OMG formed in the summer of 2006; with their first album ‘Pigeon English’ being released on that bellwether of independent labels Victory Garden. 'Isle of Grain' followed in January 2008 on White Heat grabbing album of the week in the Sunday Times (5 out of 5 stars) and the band needing a wheel barrow to carry the positive reviews. The single ‘Having a Ball’ was unlikely championed by Radio One tosser Zane Lowe. Scarborough Fair’ has the village fair fancifulness of Paul Simon's tinkering arrangement replaced by a both haunting and decidedly enchanting yet darker and more forthrightly trippy affair; a mind-warping, dream-like dub collage. Either a lysergic haven located deep in the mindset of Sun Ra, or a hazily atmospheric, drugged feel as if It’s Immaterial were produced by Martin Hannett. It’s a deeply engaging and crafted reclaiming of a folk foundation stone. ‘Giriama Wedding’ another traditional arrangement but this time a Kenyan wedding song which apparently was stumbled upon by way of a release on the legendary Nonesuch Explorer imprint, entitled 'Witchcraft and Ritual Music'. A dizzyingly up-tempo and frenetic gem that provides for a hot thick stew of wired, squirreling ska-like brass arrangements, all woven into an acutely vibrant and weirdly sultry ethnic pop song. If we weren't any the wiser we'd have hedged our bets by saying it was the Contortions in a gruelling stare-down with Pigbag
Edition of 500 on 7” vinyl. For fans of Early Factory Records, Martin Carthy, The Fall, Martin Hannett and Terry Riley.

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