After ten years, fierce independence keeps Speedy Wunderground ahead of the pack.
In the end money ruins everything, so we simply have to take a fifth opportunity to enjoy the Speedy Wunderground label’s output – for that is now unquestionably what they/it are/is – before the suits move in with their options and even worse, their ideas.
As it stands the organisation is Dan Carey, Alexis Smith and Pierre Hall. Carey has long retained his status as producer du-jour, having worked with Wet Leg, Kae Tempest, Fontaines D.C and a host of others, whilst his east London studio is still nominally the enterprise’s working base.
Logistics (and of course other stuff) have meant that it’s been three years since the label’s last compilation and this latest version arrives with neat synchronisation, in time for everyone to celebrate its tenth anniversary.
These same logistics have meant that the eight tracks (which originally appeared as limited-edition singles) are split equally in origination, with the first half being produced before lockdown and the second since.
Not that there is anything discernible in terms of sound to mark the divide, although the lag means that the opening track – the itchy funk odyssey Narcissus by the imprint/construct/in-joke Lazarus Kane – arrives after he announced the identity was being stood down.
It’s one of the strongest entries on a roster that emphasises a diversity of thought and action, with Pynch’s Disco Lights splicing the DNA of Madchester and C-86 indie like a time machine with a split personality, whilst PVA’s Divine Intervention comes straight from the Paradise Garage, sumptuous alt.disco with its sunglasses on in the dark.
Interestingly for a label that started out with a strict set of rules, there’s more than a sense here that the constrictions of the past are being put aside – Carey agrees: ‘It’s all happening very organically…It feels natural. As always, it is leading us. Not the other way around.’
As further evidence, Polish superstar Brodka and Carey’s in-house band Scottibrains are full of early new wave snap on Wrong Party, whilst the rock-Tropicalia of moa moa’s Coltan Candy recalls peak-era MGMT.Alongside this, The Lounge Society justify their rapidly mushrooming sense of potential on psychedelic freakshow Generation Game.
Maybe this is what we came for, but good compilations are meant to stretch the listener’s horizons too and serve up maybe less of what you fancy but something more challenging.
Under this banner, Joyeria’s Here Comes Trouble sounds like a a conversation with a broken but sentient computer, whilst the Raincoats-esque post-punk of deep tan’s tamu’s yiffing refuge closes things on a stay weird high.
The grey men must be eying up Speedy Wunderground, thinking about how they can milk a decade’s worth of what someone else painstakingly built and getting themselves cool in the process.
So, listen now, before the whole thing gets bought, sold, and ruined.
