Tue Oct 30 2001 at 15:57:00
Beggars Banquet is the name of an indie record label here in the UK. Based in southwest London since it was founded by Martin Mills and Nick Austin in 1972, Beggars Banquet started out as a small chain of record shops in 1972.
They were soon renting out basement space to local groups, as practice space. This then led to the staff at the shops managing the bands, and organising gigs for them. When the time came to release any of their groups records, there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm from the established record companies, so Beggars Banquet released the singles themselves, after striking a distribution deal with President. The companies first release was punk band The Lurkers Shadow/Love Story 7-inch, in 1976, which was soon followed by their first album. This early flirtation with punk, which included The Stranglers, Generation X and The Damned, made the label a pioneer of the genre.
A four-disc set looks back on the brief, fertile period in which the British band twisted conventional rock instrumentation into increasingly arcane shapes. They still inhabit a class of their own.
There is little in
Rupt & Flex to suggest Seefeel’s blissed-out beginnings making music that sparkled, echoed and droned in multi-voiced delay. This is the later incarnation, whose music is stripped back to focus on beats, clicks, rhythms and pulse, overlaid with minimal textures and sonic intervention, with only a hint of melody and song.
I have to confess I loved early Seefeel, despite a disinterest then and now in what was called shoegaze or dream pop. Seefeel seemed to exist outside those terms, their music was weightless and innovative, taking guitars and voice into new sonic territory. 1994’s
Starethrough EP was a bit of a shock and heralded not only a move from the Too Pure label to Warp (where they were the only band with guitars on the roster) but a stripping down and minimalist refocussing.
Indie Basement: Best Reissues, Box Sets & Compilations of 2020
Having already posted the Indie Basement Best Albums of 2020 list, I thought I d run down my favorite reissues and compilations from the past year. I stayed within the general confines of the things I cover on a weekly basis. So as much as I dig the Prince ˆmega-deluxe edition and Neil Young s
Homegrown, they re not on this list. For the reissues, I picked things that either had lots of worthy bonus features or had been out of print for a long time (often both). I also picked an additional 12 reissues from this year that didn t quite fit that criteria but were also worthy of note.