Foxbase Alpha

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While listening to these reissues during an oppressively gloomy, rain-sodden East Coast springtime, I also re-read Martin Amis' London Fields, a vision of the city as the second millennium drew to a close that's almost Foxbase's inverse: A world of venal yuppies, reprehensible con-men, and lost souls who've long since given up on love. Saint Etienne's heart-on-sleeve protagonists (and audience) were too earnest to conceivably survive a day in such an overwhelmingly beaten-down environment. The sort of "decaying violent reality of the harsh urban etcetera" that Mr. Ewing's essay suggests Saint Et caught shit for "ignoring." Over time Saint Etienne became a chic, stylish pop band, almost carefree in their attitude towards the business of making music. Seemingly happy to breeze outside whatever might be the prevailing trend. Foxbase Alpha feels more aware, more focused on trying to draw from the contemporary scene to create an impression. Too often does it feel forced - although, being fair, hearing the album for the first time thirty years after its release may have something to do with that. She’s The One closes the first half with more sampled refrains (taken from I’m In A Different World by The Four Tops) before we hit the pause button and adjourn for a short break – courtesy of Richard Whiteley and Countdown – only for the second half to commence with more ’90s dance beats heralding the epic tripped out 7.5 minute instrumental odyssey into lysergic atmospherics Stoned To Say The Least.

Saint Etienne’s story begins in 1966 outside a butcher’s shop in Croydon, south London. Stanley and Wiggs’ mums, both working-class women moving towards more middle-class lives, were queuing up outside, their young sons in pushchairs. They became lifelong friends and Wiggs grew up in awe of Stanley, who was 18 months older than him: “I was always so excited to see him because he was obsessed with music and would play me records all the time. ‘Hooray! We’re going to see Bobby!’” Tiger Bay (1994) represented a change of direction: the entire album was inspired by folk music, combined with modern electronica. [3] Although the album reached No.8 in the UK Albums Chart, the singles performed disappointingly, with " Pale Movie", " Like a Motorway" and " Hug My Soul" reaching No.28, No.47 and No.32 in the UK Singles Chart. In a 2009 interview, Bob Stanley said that in retrospect the band "got ahead of ourselves a bit" by releasing such an uncommercial album, which "definitely could have done with a couple more obvious songs". [14] The band's most recent film is I've Been Trying to Tell You (2021), directed by Alasdair McLellan and set to the music of the album of the same name. Unlike their previous films, it was filmed all around England; its premise was memories of teenage years and the late 1990s. [23] Songs in other films and television [ edit ] The song was an otherworldly delight: a tripped out, hazy, lazy shuffle with some gorgeous filmic atmospherics and a spaghetti western, tumbleweed aura conjured up by the heavily-reverbed production. An eerily distressed honky-tonk piano playing out the catchy motif along with a cavernous dub bass underpinned everything, whilst on top of this floated an almost spectral vocal from guest singer Moira Lambert. It was almost as if King Tubby had hitched a ride on a train bound for Brixton and Clerkenwell rather than his native Jamaica.During the early 1990s the group enjoyed extensive coverage in UK music weekly papers NME and Melody Maker and gained a reputation as purveyors of "pure pop" in the period immediately prior to the Brit-Pop explosion. So Tough reached No.7 in the UK Albums Chart. Their most popular singles of this period were " You're in a Bad Way" and " Join Our Club" (which reached No.12 and No.21 in the UK Singles Chart). [13] Remains Of The Day, an exclusive album that gathers together ten rare Foxbase Alpha-era recordings from the period most of which are appearing on vinyl for the first time.

Wiggs’s son is heavily into Suede, he adds – he seems to find this strangely funny – “out of nowhere… but what’s strange is we don’t hear it that much. We normally think of teenage bedrooms with loud music coming out - kids these days are always using their headphones. And they can access so much music so easily, which of course we couldn’t, so they have these very intense, private worlds.” They sense that this way of consuming music – being able to access any period, at any time – has also broken down the generation barrier. Wiggs talks about how his daughter came home from school recently, dying to talk to her dad. “The teacher was showing some examples of good basslines in music and he put on the video for [Saint Etienne’s 1990 single] Only Love Can Break Your Heart and there I was in her classroom! The teacher didn’t know!” How did your daughter feel? He answers shyly, but happily. “She said she was proud.” I am. But I’d also be disappointed if it was people’s favourite Saint Etienne record, because I don’t think it’s the best one. At the same time, I know as a pop fan that people tend to like the first album by a group most, because it’s the moment of discovery, and the one that captures the band’s youth, so I can understand it. But it’s always sounded like a scrapbook to me.What is undoubted though is when this album was first unveiled, it marked a brave new dawn in how so many disparate influences from subcultures and genres past could be fused into one satisfying and truly spellbinding whole. It was in every way as influential and epochal a modern contemporary album released in that new decade as was Nirvana’s Nevermind, Primal Scream’s Screamadelica and the magnum ambient/dance opus that was The Orb’s Adventures From The Ultraworld. Truly conceived of – and perfectly encapsulating – its time, its appeal endures to this day.

The original album remastered and cut onto two twelve inch 45rpm discs for higher fidelity, housed in an exclusive gatefold version of the original sleeve. You made an album with a very clear worldview and aesthetic sense, employing your knowledge to locate the sources of the material you wanted, and with the intelligence to deploy those sources correctly. You could be a 60s-inspired pop group, using 60s sources, and be recognisably stupid, but you weren’t. Christgau, Robert. "Robert Christgau: CG: Saint Etienne". robertchristgau.com . Retrieved 7 January 2023. I guess C86 was exciting, then, because it felt like it was “ours”. For people who had been too young for punk and found goth a bit unappealing. It also, if you were a nice kid, didn’t feel dangerous. When most people recall British music in the waning years of the 20th century, they immediately conjure visions and sounds of the ephemeral Britpop and post-Britpop movements, fueled in large part by bands such as Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Suede, The Verve, Radiohead, Stereophonics, and Travis.

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Propelled by multi-layered dub basslines, house rhythms, piano loops, and pounding drum breaks, the group’s interpolation sounds little like Young’s 1970 single, save for the equally plaintive power of Lambert’s ruminations. While the album version stuns, the various remixes orchestrated by the likes of the late Andrew Weatherall and Masters at Work are worth seeking out as well.