Andrew Weatherall / Pamela #1

March Violets` title may well be a play on the tune`s tempo. Stomping as it does in a military fashion. Preparing to energize to the sound of a laser gun salute, as orchestral stabs vie with kosmische counterpoint, and synths sigh like flights of angels. Subliminally sending their message of “Move your feet”. Slap And Slide surely refers to the Tackhead-like bass, and the abused bottle-neck blues sample that substitutes for a Strat, on this 9 O`Clock drop of disco. Think the funky alternatives of 400 Blows, Chakk, and A Certain Ratio`s Knife Slits Water. Its industrial leanings eventually evolving into electro, as it half-inches Man Parrish`s 808 and jumps a box-car on the Trans Europe Express. To my ears it`s as balearic as, say, William Orbit`s Fire & Mercy. The Moton 5 is fat `n` bulbous. Chugging, bugging, and banging, novo new beat that would have been big, big, big, at Ghent`s colosseum-like dance arena, Boccaccio. Part Eric “Eric B” Beysens, and part pitched-down Italo, it`s given a gladiatorial air by dramatic synthesized lines, as epic as Ultravox or early Spandau. It`s sheer simplicity has it inked-in as a future frugging classic. “The 5” then gets stripped down and re-modeled as The Moton 5-2. Its metronome beat joined by shuffling spray-can snares and drum fills that echo like a tattoo taped in a spent warehouse. The depth charge-like bottom end dropping, shaking the room with its boom as it collides, connects with its target. Boldly charting a course through inner / outer space, and buoyed by a brownian motion of Sci-Fi bubbles and alien radiophonic workshop whistles.

Four tracks from Andrew Weatherall and studio partner Nina Walsh, created within The Woodleigh Research Facility, form the debut release on Moton Records off-shoot Pamela. Due to hit stores early April, pre-orders are up over at Phonica.

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