Been on the side lines for so long my pick has changed oh about 20 times, not helped by my 1st choices being nicked 3 times (soul mining, leftism, dare).

I finally decided on an album that came in a period of my life (late 30s) when I’d left the semi-detached suburban family life behind (2 happy divorces) and started to “party” hard for the first time. I’d never even smoked a spliff until I was 35, but what was to follow was 15 years of thrills pills and bellyaches.

The weekend I first heard this album was the first time I had “done a througher” I was crashed out on mate’s sofa in Headingly. I was still coming down after a lock in at Oporto, Sun was blasting through the net curtains and The cd had been left on repeat in the background for about 10 hours. It’s been engrained in my subconscious ever since. The 90s had been a bland mix of Britpop as Oasis pulp and Madchester seemed to bleed from every speaker. This album just crashed the party and didn’t give a fuck.

A few lads just fucking around in their parent’s garage came up with a demo cd that beat both the verve and Massive attack to that years mercury prize. it’s the raw under produced brilliance that made this stand out. (They recorded most of the demo album on an old 4 track but later they found that the equipment they had used was fucked. rather than re-record, they just mastered the original tapes.

There’s so much going on as they just experimented with sound samples, percussion and anything else they could find plus the voice of Ian Ball that could grind coffee at 100 yards.

I never got on with their subsequent albums, Maybe because it was impossible to reproduce the recklessness of this first attempt and I lost interest.

anyway enjoy.

Gomez / Bring it on