Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Now I Got Worry (1996)

For a man who just loves to rock'n'roll, Jon Spencer has been the target for a lot of hate in his time.

Slagged for having for an Ivy League college education, for lacking emotional depth and, strangest of all, for a 'racist' appropriation of the blues for his own nefarious ends, Spencer has had it in the ear before from all quarters.

The racism accusations are hard to fathom from a UK perspective, a bit like Claire Balding mentioning a 'Mexican wave' in the crowd when interviewing a US tennis star during Wimbledon last week to the response of a slightly shocked laugh and an explanation that 'that's not a PC term back home'. Balding sounded as baffled as most of her audience must have felt.

Accusations by a couple of white critics against Spencer that the Blues Explosion (also comprising second guitarist Judah Bauer and drummer Russell Simins) were a 'blackface parody' guilty of disrespecting black music didn't make much sense on this side of the pond either. After all, this is a band who have collaborated with the likes of Chuck D, Solomon Burke, Rufus Thomas, Andre Williams, RL Burnside, Bernie Worrell, Steve Jordan and Martina Topley-Bird over the years, which hardly suggests active Klan membership.

Perhaps it stems from Spencer's cartoonish presence both on record and on stage. Having started out in chaotic arty New York punk outfit Pussy Galore, who were big on attitude but low on songwriting ability, Spencer found his feet as a performer when he developed the persona of a speedfreak hillbilly loverman, stealing visually from Elvis's 1969 Comeback Special and sounding like a delirious amalgamation of every vocalist emerging out of Sun Studio circa 1954.

He's not interested in venerating the blues, rock'n'roll and rockabilly, but rather keeping alive the wild, ribald side of it that brought us the likes of Bessie Smith's Kitchen Man, Little Richard's Tutti Frutti, Lucille Bogan's Shave 'Em Dry or Chuck Berry's My Ding-A-Ling. Rock'n'roll is meant to be a little edgy after all, isn't it?

The Cramps had paved the way for this kind of punk-edged revivalism, with the likes of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Blasters following after, with Nick Cave giving it a swing more recently with Grinderman, but Spencer seemed to find himself in the firing line for daring to boil everything down to a frenetic blur of sawn-off shotgun riffs and verbal tics. On Orange, the 1994 LP that preceded Now I Got Worry, the band repeatedly shout 'Blues Explosion!' in nearly every song and Spencer sounds tongue-tied half the time, chewing on the microphone and blurting out lyrics like he's suffering from some kind of rock'n'roll Tourette's syndrome.

Whether you buy into this delirium or not is probably the key to whether you're going to dig JSBX, and plenty of people do not.

Seeing them play live certainly helps. When JSBX appeared on The Word back in 1994, presenter Marc Lamarr was sufficiently moved to declare them "the best live band I've ever seen". They were nothing short of superb when I saw them touring Now I Got Worry in late 1996 with support from RL Burnside, the veteran Mississippi bluesman who had collaborated with the band on his fabulously raw A Ass Pocket Of Whiskey album (captured in a single day off from recording Now I Got Worry).

Burnside's swampy electric blues, featuring Bauer on harmonica, set the scene nicely for a set of brilliantly focused ferocity. The diversions into hip-hop, rap and dub that added extra colour to Orange, Now I Got Worry and the Experimental Remixes EP that had come inbetween were largely shorn away to focus on a brilliantly streamlined charge through their finest rockabilly punk blues moments, while Spencer indulged in his wildest Elvis on PCP stage antics while occasionally dishing out some serious theramin abuse.

When Spencer claims the band burn through more energy in a show than most people do in a whole working week, he's telling the truth.

Bands with this kind of stage presence often fall flat in the studio but Now I Got Worry beautifully captures that energy, right from Spencer's screaming intro to Skunk, through the minute-long hardcore blast of Identify to the swinging, fidgity Wail, where the declaration 'I'm already feeling messed up' sounds strangely celebratory. 'Weird' Al Yankovic directed the video.

The pace drops briefly for a cover of Dub Narcotic's Fuck Shit Up that sounds like early Beck with its gloopy keyboard sounds and cut-and paste treatment of Bauer's vocals.

2 Kindsa Love rides in on a cruise missile of a riff that somehow manages to find another level of bludgeoning brilliance before briefly taking a reverb-heavy swaggering detour, then heading back to that battering ram riff. If the White Stripes had recorded 2 Kindsa Love you have to imagine it would regular appear on those pointless top 100 greatest songs ever lists.

Love All Of Me combines rockabilly chicken scratch guitar with slide guitar, harmonica and a pounding rhythm section. Rufus Thomas turns up for Chicken Dog, which is frankly a match made in heaven. Rufus chuckles his way through the intro, lets the band hammer out their righteous thing, then sings a couple of typically absurd choruses before everyone joins in a funky finale of animal noises.

The pace finally relents a little on Rocketship, an R&B stomper with Spencer in a romantic mood, that brings a near perfect side one to an end.

Side two finds them still in the mood on Dynamite Lover, before the band cranks up the pressure again on Hot Shot, Simins' relentlessly pounding drums pushing Spencer to ever greater heights of wailing frustration.

Can't Stop features some great barrelhouse piano from Beastie Boys collaborator Money Mark, with Spencer declaring: "This is the part of the record where I ask you to put your hand in the air... and kiss my ass, because your girlfriend still loves me." Thom Yorke should take note.

Firefly Child is a churning rocker with Spencer in crooning mood over some great Money Mark keyboards before the whole thing builds very nicely to a climax with Justin Berry on sax.

Spencer digs out his moonshine-crazy Elvis impression again for Eyeballin' with some nice slide guitar from Bauer before a disco stomp briefly butts in. R.L. Got Soul is a funky blues number that doffs its cap to RL Burnside with Bauer breaking out one of his finest ever solos.

Get Over Here is a crazed two-minute stomp before the album finally collapses to an exhausted conclusion with Guilty, a warped, sticky, stumbling oddity, complete with breaking glass, slow doo-wop backing vocals and guitar interventions that sound like an overheating cement mixer.

JSBX never quite managed this level of intensity and great songwriting in the studio again, but Now I Got Worry stands as testament to the genius of a much underrated band.

They followed it up in 1997 with a fine live album, which they called Controversial Negro, partly as a two-fingered salute to their critics and partly as a tribute to Public Enemy's Burn Hollywood Burn, during which an uptight white voice asks Flavor Flav: "We're considering you for a part in our new production, how do you feel about playing a controversial negro?"

Spencer hasn't had much more to say on the subject - after all, why waste your time on fools when there's fun to be had?

Future Sound Of London - Dead Cities (1996)

Rumours that Amorphous Androgynous have been collaborating with Noel Gallagher on his debut album have been circulating for a while, which sparked the decision to revisit the remarkable run of albums and epic singles they released as Future Sound Of London, particularly between 1993 and 1996.

There were 3 FSOL albums in that fertile spell, all of them doubles, but I'm drawn to the last of those, Dead Cities, which contains some strange, haunting and flat-out brilliant music, along with hints as to why the band would be abandoned in favour of other projects.

Pressure for more commercial releases would herald the end of their relationship with Virgin while a desire to work with real instruments would lead to a change in direction away from a futuristic electronic sound towards a more backwards-looking approach that would ultimately result in hooking up with dyed in the wool classicist Gallagher.

Brian Dougans and Gaz Cobain have previously worked with Gallagher when asked to remix the 2009 Oasis single, Falling Down, transforming the four-minute original into a five-part monster lasting over 22 minutes, even stripping out Noel's original vocal in favour of Alisha Sufi, one-time singer with obscure 1970s hippy act Magic Carpet.

Noel and FSOL/AA share a love of the 1960s/early 1970s and past lives in Manchester, where Gallagher grew up, and Dougans and Cobain were students in the mid-1980s, during which time they started out their musical career releasing techno tracks under various names and DJing on the local Kiss radio station.

Following FSOL's 1991 debut LP, Accelerator, which including the clubbing classic Papua New Guinea, the duo signed to Virgin, with the first fruits of this partnership released under the new moniker of Amorphous Androgynous, with a move in a more ambient direction on 1993's Tales Of Ephidrina.

If Virgin were feeling a little confused about what exactly had they signed then they were about to get a whole lot more discombobulated. Before the year was out Dougans and Cobain finally delivered an FSOL single, Cascade. It came in six parts and was over 36 minutes long.

At least the Orb had set a precedent on this one, having released the 39-minute Blue Room single in June 1992 and even managed to land a hit with it, including a bizarre Top Of The Pops appearance during which they played chess.

Cascade still had some recognisable dance beats, even if the overall mood was of a strangely "euphoric melancholia" (Cobain's description) that seemed vaguely indebted to Vangelis's Bladerunner soundtrack.

However, the beats would continue to fade out of the the picture and mood and textures grow ever stronger when the Lifeforms double album arrived in spring 1994. FSOL had lost all interest in the dance floor by this point and were created rich, dense musical landscapes best suited to headphone listening. Songs constantly evolved, often piling on more and more layers, so you found yourself navigating weird, unpredictable paths, with the whole thing mixed into a seamless whole. Some tracks were still rhythm based but others were pure abstract electronica and yet the whole thing hung together beautifully.

The inventiveness seemed endless to the extent that one track could be expanded out in multiple thrilling directions, the possibilities appearing almost limitless. The title track, which featured a wordless vocal from the Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser, was also released a single, this time in seven parts stretched over nearly 39 minutes.

Without the traditional rock frontman front and centre, FSOL's music seemed to push the listener's imagination to the heart of the music instead, richly rewarding close listening.

The band's experimentation also stretched out into computer-generated videos and the concept of playing live without ever leaving the studio, arranging a tour of cities around the world that would be played on a local radio station via ISDN line, with each providing a unique snapshot of what the band were up to.

The limited edition ISDN album appeared in late 1994, mixing together 75 minutes of these tracks from various performances, all of them new, with the band now moving in a darker, slightly tougher direction. Robert Fripp appeared from a Radio One session with the band and film samples peppered the tracks, including snippets from Repo Man, Predator, Aliens and Escape From New York.

1995 was relatively quiet apart from the re-release of  ISDN with three different tracks and an expanded double vinyl version featuring 16 tracks that combined the best of the two CD versions. In fact the band were busy experimenting in the studio, with a vast wealth of material from this period included on a series of six FSOL Archive albums later released by the band, along with a series of three Environments LPs focusing on the band's more ambient side (of which, Environments 2 is as good as anything in their back catalogue).

Another epic single arrived in autumn 1996 with My Kingdom, coming in five parts and just over half an hour long. Sampling Ennio Morricone's Once Upon A Time In America soundtrack and Mary Hopkin's vocal from Vangelis's Rachel's Song, it unfurled slowly to reveal a lush landscape that misleadingly suggested a return to calmer waters.

That idea soon evaporated when the Wipeout 2097 soundtrack was released featuring two FSOL tracks, Herd Killing and We Have Explosive, which both sampled sledgehammer Run DMC beats. Big beat was on the rise at this stage, with The Chemical Brothers having made a major impact with the previous year's Exit Planet Dust album and The Prodigy releasing Firestarter in the spring, so FSOL's Wipeout contributions (another track, Landmass, appeared in the game but not on the soundtrack) sounded weirdly contemporary from a band that had spent so long drifting in their own perculiar orbit.

Herd Killing and Explosive actually sounded great within the context of the game but it was a surprise to find them included on Dead Cities, which came out two weeks after the Wipeout soundtrack. You have to suspect pressure from Virgin, even though Cobain talked at length in interviews at the time about the album having a concept borne from spending time in London: "We've always been kind of obsessed with this idea of things going into decline. It's kind of like we're always drawn to the splattered texture on the pavement or the building that's been knocked down, you know. So it's kind of that sort of stuff that's prompted 'Dead Cities' in a way, wandering round and taking that kind of photographic work."

Side one of Dead Cities has its pleasures but skip it and the remaining three sides make a lot more sense in terms of progression from Lifeforms and ISDN. The sound is still darker and more paranoid than before but the ever-evolving ambience is very much intact in contrast to the repetitive breakbeats of Herd Killing and Explosive at the start of the album.

Everyone In The World Is Doing Something Without Me takes another sample from Mary Hopkin's vocal from Vangelis's Rachel's Song and could easily serve as another, particularly desolate part of My Kingdom, which confusingly turns up next in yet another different form to the five parts on the single and with the previously central Vangelis sample only appearing briefly four minutes in.

Max is a beautifully wistful wisp of a song featuring Max Richter on piano and side two ends with Antique Toy, full of fidgity beats, spooky drones and occasional bursts of sub-bass that evolve into whispered voices and electronic buzzes.

Side three starts with the slow drones of Quagmire before it all gets in a bit jazzy, sounding like Herbie Hancock's Headhunters jamming with Prince and Squarepusher. Birds sounds and watery noises occasionally appear and it's all spectacularly strange. About six minutes in, it transforms into In A State Of Permanent Abyss with cut-up splashes of soft, sweet piano sourced from Richter sounding like something off Fridge's wonderful Happiness album (which came out five years later). Glass then gets a bit of a groove on, with a sax sample thrown in, before drifting into a collage of found sounds.

Side four starts with the rolling, shimmering keyboards and bird noise of Yage. Drums and wobbly bass slowly emerge and it turns a bit Ennio Morriconi-esque, complete with Moroccan flute and, according to the liner notes, 'some weird Greek instrument that no one remembers the name of except the Greeks who live in Greece'.

Vit Drowning is sleepy trip-hop with wordless female vocals drifting through it before seagulls herald the brief piano and acoustic guitar reverie of Through Your Gills I Breathe. First Death In The Family is a stately requiem featuring rolling thunder, milk bottle blowing and a cheap wooden organ, managing to be melancholy and quirky at the same time. Finally comes a brief thrash version of Dead Cities recorded with Snuff's Simon Wells to bring things to a suitably baffling conclusion.

Whatever the truth about label interference, Dead Cities marked the end of FSOL's remarkable run of form and the conclusion of their relationship with Virgin. ISDN gigs continued into 1997 but Dougans and Cobain soon switched their attention back to Amorphous Androgynous, reinventing the name as a totally unironic hippy band straight out of the late 60s/ early 70s but with cutting-edge production values. Aptly enough, they also abandoned city living (giving them something else in common with Noel Gallagher), with Dougans setting up home in a former church in Somerset apparently located at the intersection of nine leylines and Cobain spending a lot of time in France.

Cobain had some kind of crisis shortly after Dead Cities, with the official (and quite possibly true) reason given as mercury poisoning due to his fillings. He's always been a very intense personality, and back then he was prone to using interviews to scattergun his frustration over a series of issues, including himself. He's a little more mellow nowadays, though no less loquacious. In contrast, Dougans rarely says anything at all - check out their 2010 Mojo Award acceptance speech for the perfect example of this odd couple in action.

We shall have to wait to see what becomes of any potential Gallagher collaboration but with Dougans and Cobain you can at least be pretty confident the results won't be dull, which is more than you can say for Beady Eye.

EXTRA: Gallagher has now confirmed an 18-track collaboration with Amorphous Androgynous is to be released next year, once the label-pleasing dad-rock album is out of the way first.

Gallagher said of the AA album: "It's really fucking far out man. It's the furthest out I've ever been. Some of it's krautrock, some of it's soul, some of it's funk - and that's just the first song." All of which sounds promising.

In typically contrary form, Dougans and Cobain are now recording new music as Future Sound Of London for the first time in well over a decade just when their Amorphous Androgynous moniker gets a massive publicity boost. Roll on 2012, then.