Sometimes music can evoke a sort of time travel response or at least send you on a mental journey through the almost forgotten corridors and hidden spaces of the archive of the memory. And even though The Sly Persuaders are new to me, they trigger just such a response and past experiences, the sounds, the smells, the strobe lit visuals and the rush of a young man being consumed by the live music experience come rushing back.
It’s some time in the 80’s, I’m somewhere in a pre-gentrified North London, somewhere near the front of the crowd and the band is, The Bad Seeds or The Gun Club or The Cramps or any number of caustic, scuzzy, post-punk experimentation writ large and live before a speed addled, lager fuelled crowd. Ahh…those where the days. Hang on! These are the days as we now have The Sly Persuaders to channel those heady days through and then build new experiences and new memories around.
This is psychedelia painted only in black and grey, rock and roll that grumbles rather than grooves, moonlit psycho-surf, the ketamine ooze of rock gone so wrong it is so right. I used to feel sorry for young music buffs who never got to experience the industrial weight and uncompromising art attacks of that era and that scene, well no more as we have The Sly Persuaders around whom to build a whole new movement. Who’s up for that?
