Mention 80s pop and everyone immediately thinks of the bog standard chart stuff that’s become the staple of every lazy compilation CD and retro club night with playlists assembled from the aforementioned compilations by ‘DJs’ who weren’t even born in 1989 and probably wouldn’t know a 12” if it was used as a frisbee in the direction of their head.. But the 80s was so much more than ‘Rio’, ‘Karma Chameleon’ and ‘Relax’. The Human League didn’t only release one single – and what’s more, their early minimalist synth stuff, which bore an experimental edge, is in many ways emblematic of the real 80s, and it was the underground where it was all really happening.
This is the starting point for ‘Candy in Weightlessness’, the latest offering from Full English Breakfast, the warped musical vision of one man, Alvine Spetz, who likes to scramble his genres as much as his eggs. FEB aren’t about pandering to commercial conventions – but that doesn’t mean the music’s by any means unlistenable. In fact, the first track, ‘Bubbleworks’ has a definite groove to it – even if post-punk guitars plough over the top of it toward the end.
Clipped disembodied fragments of the postmodern world provide the core of ‘Repairs’ to curiously disorientating effect when removed from their context and juxtaposed with a vintage pop chorus, and quirky, jerky rhythms and wibbly synths half bury the monotone vocals on ‘Open Your Mind’ before a blaze of brass burns through it all.
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‘Ivor’s Noodles’ is pretty far out, a shuffling beat providing the backdrop to nonsentical lyrics like ‘tra la la tweet blah blah tweet’ ‘If your breasts are too big, you’ll fall over’. Then it all takes a sharp left turn, with grating synths and bumping bass tones bouncing around a stuttery drum machine that occasionally explodes into a percussive riot.
The nine and a half minute ‘Giftshop Glide’ is a real standout: building from an atmospheric introduction, through fear chords and a bleak, skittering bass and evolving into a spaced-out post-rock meander and winding up on a club-friendly vibe after a gentle chillout passage around three quarters of the way through. It’s a superb track, and evidence that FEB aren’t just about whacky synth amalgamations and incongruity.
It may be a mental mash-up, but with ‘Candy in Weightlessness’, Full English Breakfast have served up a crazy concoction that really gives the listener a lot to chew on, without making a meal of it.
Full English Breakfast Online
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