from the 12” single, Factory Records, 1984The musical cross-pollinations that were part & parcel to the British post-punk scene never paid much mind to any rules or regulations, sometimes resulting in overly stuffed pieces that fell flat to even the most experimental of ears, but often achieving the kind of far-reaching, genre-defying pastiches which made you both groove and question your allegiance to any one scene or sound. Manchester, for all it’s talent, was still a fairly small town, particularly for those that were “alternative”, so I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising that Factory Records would wind up signing a boogie jazz-funk crew like 52nd Street (the drummer from A Certain Ratio is the brother of these guys’ bassist); in all honesty, a grip of post-punk cuts from all over England belie an obvious affinity for disco and electronic post-disco music, so this wasn’t even a stretch I suppose. This particular single was produced by Stephen Morris, drummer for Factory’s biggest selling group New Order, and his fingerprints are all over the place (namely those synth-drum rolls), but it’s the vocal stylings of one Diane Chalemagne that pushes this number from standard banger to being an all-out funktastic classic; notably, she later became the voice of Goldie’s early hits, including his renowned “Inner City Life”.
