Cargo Records

Smoke...(Re-Issue)

Since impressing far and wide with their Beats for Bars project Patrick Bird and Martyn Savigar have now expanded their range of collaborators to weird, wonderful and sometimes audacious effect.Since impressing far and wide with their Beats for Bars project Patrick Bird and Martyn Savigar have now expanded their range of collaborators to weird, wonderful and sometimes audacious effect.

In the immediate vicinity, there's former Specimen and Siouxsie & the Banshees guitarist Jon Klein, drummer Chris Bell [also Specimen but a bevy of 80s giants too] and, showing up in the course of this hallucino-genic journey, Billie Holliday, Catatonia, Marc Bolan and even the young John Peel, whose unmistakeable and always welcome tones talk about woodland creatures on 'Deaf Aid' amidst another calming space-shuffle before singer Anna Jacyszyn wafts in.

The concept is mash-up taken to diverse extremes creating slow motion symphonies which plant some familiar voices in fields of dreams where the mood is deep, dubbed and drenched in ghosts as Billie Holliday looms in "Trav'lin' Light" to spine-melting effect, "Soul Clapp" creates a new hiphop hybrid, "White Space" is an orchestral treatment of goth-glamsters Specimen and there are tracks like "Deuteronomy" where the players stretch out after the guests have left.

This is an opiated aural delight from start to finish, by which time you might be stroking the ceiling like a long-lost friend, satisfied that now the world's a better place and wondering why they don't make them like this any more.

Now at a lower price!