INTERNATIONAL PEOPLE’S GANG - 0006 (EM:T)
June 1st, 2006 by rui
Definitely not doing for David Bowie’s National People’s Gang what Tatum O’Neal did for Elizabeth Taylor’s National Velvet, IPG see themselves as the embodiment of the collective unconcisous that we are all born in to. Most others see them as Ric Peet and Martyn Watson, a Nottingham based electronic duo, whose debut album 3395 epitomised the em:t ethos in the mid nineties (not surprising, since they were involved in setting up the label and its alter ego, t:me). An album of found sounds, baggy British grooves and electronic sculptures this record was probably the soundtrack to more people’s post clubbing listening during that decade than remember or realise, with some very fine moments including Aeroplane and Nine Churchill Drive.
After a Blue Nile-esque delay of 11 years their second album 0006, subtitled Action Painting, is about to be released by em:t. The bold red and yellow colours on the cover remind me of Primal Scream’s Screamadelica and that similarity extends to the affable and loose rhythms of this one, which starts the album, and that time already? Elsewhere more downtempo pieces like ac harmonics and shimmer are fashioned from various bits and bats of mutated audio samples and chipper melodies that doff their hat to you as they roll out of the loudspeakers. Granny takes a trip actually reminds me of a particular episode of Eastenders that was a ‘Dot and Ethel reminisce’ special (maybe IPG saw it too), so its pyschadaelic regression through old time dances to playground songs clearly does the trick. The biggest surprise here is the gorgeous pop of the disc’s finale: stop. IPG really aren’t a singles band judging from their first album and the rest of this one, but this track, with vocals from Katty Heath, who’s graced records by Crazy Penis and Bent, really deserves all the summer airplay it can get.
Like 3395 this isn’t an album that immediately reveals itself - at first listen it sounds uneven and random, even jarring at times, but given a few plays its unique humour and amiable personality shine through. If you wish some of the deeper electronic music of the nineties had been a bit more fun and a little less paranoid then IPG and this album are for you. It’s also a welcome return to form for em:t confident stride faltered with their last release, an unremarkable and worringly new-age collaboration between Gaudi and music therapist Antonio Testa.
Jez Wells
