Recently Acquired

Thought I'd give a quick review of a couple of records bought recently.

Monochrome Set - 405 Lines 7"/Alphaville 7"

Have to say that these are both very cool indie-pop records from the late 70s. First heard the Monochrome Set with their s/t 7" I downloaded form Soulseek - not sure where I actually heard about them, I presume it was a blog site bot for the life of me I can't remember which one. Anyway, if you're into slightly more pop-styled post punk/rough trade fare then this is definitely for you.

Spizz Oil - 6,000 Crazy 7"

I remember first hearing Where's Captain Kirk? by Spizz Energi on a middling to bad cheap punk comp I bought in a local Woolworths of all places years ago and thinking it was a cool song, if only for novelty value. Fast forward to last year and I'm absorbing the Rough Trade Post Punk vol.1 comp and in the booklet the compiler makes reference to a band called Spizz Oil and I'm intrigued - can two different bands have the word Spizz in the title. Turns out no, the singer had a thing whereby he had to change the band name every year (Athletic Spizz80 are another variant), and Spizz Oil are one of the earlier modes. This single is from 1978/9 on rough trade and is ok, a little same-y to a lot of music coming out at this time, clearly very influenced by the punk 'sound'. The title song is probably the best on the record

Dawson - Romping Egos 7"

Dawson are a Scottish band from Glasgow who were around during the late 80s/early 90s and ran their own label called Gruff Wit on which this record was released. They were contempories of Dog Faced Hermans and a number of other bands (including the fantastically named Archbishop Kebab) who are examined in much better detail here. This record is a jerky, pounding affair with multiple rhythms scuttling off all over the place and a song named for Noel Edmunds (possibly the highlight of the record). Going to need to try and track down some of their other records