Kadhim's Totally Hot Album of the Week #18

Do you know anyone who says, “Music is crap nowadays?” Let’s be honest: those people are the most boring people you know. In fact, you’re not even sure why you know them anymore. Everytime you hang out with them you find your brain warning you, with fundamentalist zeal, “Get the fuck out of here before I cut off the oxygen to myself”.

Quantic & Alice Russell are two of the UK’s finest, if the not the finest, independent artists. Both release through the sublime Brighton label ‘Tru Thoughts’. Since the millenium they’ve been carving out a space away from the mainstream of British music for soul, funk, gospel and blues. And my god is that space a good place to be.

The album whisks you off to all corners of the globe, with ‘I’d Cry’ leaving me with flowers in my hand outside a Cuban restaurant, stood up by my long-legged Habanera date; with ‘Travelling Song’ dropping me slumped drunk in a New York jazz bar; and ‘Boogaloo 33’ throwing legs and arms in all directions on some Ozzie beach.

It’s the kind of music that I’d love the director to use when shooting the biopic of my life. Boys of a certain age who have read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, or watched a Godard film or two, are prone to bouts of solipsism like this. Put more simply, when wandering the streets of Soho drunk, we fall into the trap of narrating the night in our heads, with suitably ostentatious imagery, and friends transformed into ‘characters’ who are then blown all out of proportion. I should confess: I do this almost all of the time. And from now on, whenever I imagine my life being a billion times cooler than it is (what’s a billion times zero?), Quantic, Alice Russell, and the Combo Barbaro will play on in my head.

I’ll end by beseeching you to dive into ‘Tru Thoughts’’ back catalogue. There’s gem after gem; it’s perhaps the best independent label this side of the millenium. This latest release, Look Around the Corner, does credit to their record of putting out great music, and its title is wonderfully suggestive – softly prodding the UK public to check out what’s going just down their street beneath the ostentation of modern pop.

I’ll confess, this album isn’t actually out yet – it’s out on the 2nd of April. If you think I should only review albums that have been released already, tweet, “Do it again or I’ll show you what for” @kadhimshubber. Alternatively, tweet @tru_thoughts and ask them for a promo copy.