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Sudden Sway

Started by Pingers, September 12, 2019, 09:39:09 PM

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Pingers

I doubt you will have heard of Sudden Sway. There were making music in the 80s and early 90s - very unusual and very excellent music that didn't filter through to many people. A lot of it was a comment on 1980s materialism, at which they waved a gentle and good-humoured critique, their releases wrapped in faux marketing / branding nonsense ('Brought to you by Conceptat, the Ideas Agency'). One side of their wholly suprising and offbeat album 'Spacemate' consisted of advertising jingles for such products as the Omnispend Sway, Romeoplan and Project Program, a financial planning programme for kids ('Don't bring us up on anything else mum, Project Program so we're grown up when we're young, mum')

It's all gloriously bonkers, wonky and twisted pop music which never loses its unerring sense of melody and fun. They didn't really do gigs but did an exhibition at the ICA and their second album '76 Kids Forever was a soundtrack for a stage musical that they performed once.

I listened to Spacemate the other night and was reminded just how good it is. I've never heard anything like it before or since, it really is unique.

Absorb the anus burn

Quote from: Pingers on September 12, 2019, 09:39:09 PM
I doubt you will have heard of Sudden Sway. There were making music in the 80s and early 90s - very unusual and very excellent music that didn't filter through to many people. A lot of it was a comment on 1980s materialism, at which they waved a gentle and good-humoured critique, their releases wrapped in faux marketing / branding nonsense ('Brought to you by Conceptat, the Ideas Agency'). One side of their wholly suprising and offbeat album 'Spacemate' consisted of advertising jingles for such products as the Omnispend Sway, Romeoplan and Project Program, a financial planning programme for kids ('Don't bring us up on anything else mum, Project Program so we're grown up when we're young, mum')

It's all gloriously bonkers, wonky and twisted pop music which never loses its unerring sense of melody and fun. They didn't really do gigs but did an exhibition at the ICA and their second album '76 Kids Forever was a soundtrack for a stage musical that they performed once.

I listened to Spacemate the other night and was reminded just how good it is. I've never heard anything like it before or since, it really is unique.

They were great if I remember rightly... Tons of hooks and oddball twists and turns. Peel championed them and they did a memorable session for him.

Pingers

Yes, the Peel session was one of the early vinyl releases on Strange Fruit. One track ('Let's Evolve!') is evolution done in style of a 1970s primary school PE session - "...and rest". The other track, 'Relationships' explains how to make gnocchi with a musical backdrop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=286iZCsslu4

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Let's Evolve!
I remember Sudden Sway, right enough. I initially was a big fan of their Peel sessions, but by the time they released eight different versions of the same song as a series of singles, I thought they were putting gimmicky- Ness before releasing exciting new music, and lost interest in them.
They probably remain one of the best bands to come out of Peterborough, though.

Funcrusher

I also remember them, the Peel session and also the single (Sing Song?) with 8 different versions - I had the one that was mixed by Adrian Sherwood.

Pingers

If I remember right, if you ordered Sing Song from a record shop (that's how it worked in them days, kids) you couldn't specify which one and Blanco y Negro would send the shop a random version. I was therefore delighted when I went in to Pop Records on a visit to Reading and found they had the full set, which I bought.

Twed


Pingers


wosl

If you're of a certain age and were a regular Peel listener, there's no way you won't have heard of Sudden Sway.  I videoed their appearance (the tape's long lost) on Whistle Test, where they did a piece where they sat in some sort of enclosure, posing as a genre/mood human jukebox - you punched in the type of tune you wanted to hear from a selection, and they'd do a minute or so in the chosen style.  There's a dreadfully tape-ravaged recording of them on the 'Test, doing a gorge version of Packet Of Vacuum ("Ballad") here.

Pingers

Quote from: wosl on September 13, 2019, 06:07:01 PM
If you're of a certain age and were a regular Peel listener, there's no way you won't have heard of Sudden Sway.  I videoed their appearance (the tape's long lost) on Whistle Test, where they did a piece where they sat in some sort of enclosure, posing as a genre/mood human jukebox - you punched in the type of tune you wanted to hear from a selection, and they'd do a minute or so in the chosen style.  There's a dreadfully tape-ravaged recording of them on the 'Test, doing a gorge version of Packet Of Vacuum ("Ballad") here.

Perhaps because me and my mate were the only people for miles around who had heard of them, as far as we could tell, i kind of assumed very few people would know about them, so it's good to know they are better known than I thought. Web content about them is lacking apart from a FB site and a couple of tiny fan sites. It seems they pretty much just stopped what they were doing and stopped making music.

wosl

Just like me and my mate; hundreds or thousands of Peel-listening me-and-my-mate combos of a certain time frame, all over the country. It constitutes a world of sorts.