Label: 4AD Format: CD
Mid-’80s effusive journalism alert! I mean, for fuck’s sake, they’re on 4AD, the tracks range from ’81 to ’85, and one of them (“No Motion”) is produced with the aid of Robin Guthrie, creator of the “swirling sonic cathedrals” (see what I mean?) The Cocteau Twins hung out in being all elegant and ethereal and giving it some with the “Frou-Frou Foxes”. It has to be ethereal (see, it’s that word again; I did warn you…). Not a matter for conjecture.
Okay, so the guitars are, in a kind of Cocteaus/Cure sort of way, but there’s something a great deal Dubbier going on with the bassist, and the drummer does his best Steven Morris (Joy Division stuttery pounding) impression but a bit slower, and the effects – well, okay, you know what kind of effects they’ve got. “Mi” even has an air of that constant-rhythm-with-endless-amount-of-echo-on-brief-touches-of-guitar vibe that was the only time the Dead Kennedys even sounded remotely like Bauhaus (“Holiday In Cambodia” and “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” being the otherwise totally dissimilar tracks in question) and was all the rage back then. Only a bit Dubbier. “Mixed signals”, I think, is the phrase.
But it all makes a weird kind of sense, as these instrumentals (for that, my friends, is what these tracks unfashionably for the time are) build and you find yourself thinking “Why didn’t all 4AD bands try this stuff out?”- a question to which, obviously, the answer is “Because they were all trying their own different stuff out and were probably a bit busy being massive and influential and meant for better things while the likes of Dif Juz were cruelly underrated and passed over due to their lack of vocal hooks”.
“CS” in particular is a lost (or rather, forgotten in the mists of time and the Cocteaus) classic, a persistent tweak of the treble string providing the horribly infectious backbone to a slow-building, fast-moving cyclone of sonic weather and candyfloss with machine-gun guitar bursts riding on the storm (as they would have said back when this kind of music was The Done Thing). More storms and floating than bluebells and pixies, it has to be said, but none the less charming (and ever so slightly spookier) for it.
Dumb name and hideously poncey track titles aside, Dif Juz – well, they don’t rock, exactly, but they are (or were) fucking good. Check it out and see what you missed while you were being all fey in Blue Bell Knoll.
-Deuteronemu 90210 And His Amazing Animal Band-
