My recent trip back to Ultramarine's 90s albums and the recent re- issue of some unreleased recordings from 1996 led me to Weird Gear, the second track on 1991's Every Man And Woman Is A Star, a song with vocals by Brendan Staunton and a very well deployed string sample from 1983...
The bouncy folk/ techno groove and Brendan's soulful vocal are a dream. The lyrics are from a Kevin Ayres song, There Is Loving Among Us from 1972 and Kevin's Whatevershebringswesing album.
The swirling strings sample is of course from The Cutter, the second single from Echo And The Bunnymen's third album Porcupine- the Bunnymen and producer Kingbird (Ian Broudie) pulled out all the stops with The Cutter, Eastern strings, scouse psychedelia growing from their post- punk dread and some of Ian's best lyrics, lines about the seventh floor, hurdles approaching, drops in the ocean, Sellotape and knives and being the happy loss. What's it all about? I don't know. It's exhilarating and anthemic stuff though.
This earlier demo version saw the light of day on the Never Stop 12", also from 1983, a wonderfully rattly version with trebly guitars courtesy of Will Sergeant but lacking those distinctive strings.
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