Chicken and Cheese With a Siding of Peas – Joby Longyin (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

It’s that time of year again, well, almost. As well as all the usual fun and festivities that come with Christmas, it is also the time of the year when Joby Longyin drops the latest longplayer. As a taster for what is to come, a little teaser to tempt you, “Chicken and Cheese with a Siding of Peas” has made it’s way into the world to get you in the mood.

Joby Longyin’s albums are like nothing you have heard before, a musical meander through the dancefloor world and clubland sound, straightforward, unadorned, and in your face. Except the music seems almost like an anagram or mash-up of what you might expect. You recognise the various elements, but the finished tune is wholly unexpected.

So, before the full-length Saatana arrives on the big day itself, “Chicken and Cheese with a Siding of Peas” is a sonic morsel for your delectation, a musical amuse-bouche, an imperative aperitif. It is a banging (not a word someone of my age uses readily, but it is totally apt) track, all euro-beat speed groove, soaked in liquid sonics, and a singalong lyrical blast, a good 50 per cent of which you learnt by reading the title.

It’s musically fun, lyrically a bit silly, and wonderfully infectious. It is also a song that might not make too much sense in the cold light of day but if heard under the neon strobe, on a packed dancefloor, at one in the morning, as the steam rises off the young movers and groovers, not only makes perfect sense but could be one of those unexpected hits, that just seems to come out of the blue, for no other reason that it, and therefore the listener, doesn’t take itself at all seriously.