Nite Songs

  "Fifty five million and that's just the start of it..."  - Thee Hypnotics  - Justice In Freedom You could probably tell everything you need to know about Thee Hypnotics just by looking at the sleeve of this album. Four mean-looking longhairs who look like they just teleported in from the scummiest Detroit garage you could imagine circa 1969 or so ready to kick loose and fry your brain with some synapse-exploding primal rock 'n' roll. Even more impressive when you consider they were actually from that perennial punchline for jokes about boring home counties towns, High Wycombe... Thee Hypnotics were a classic "right place, wrong time" band - plenty of critical acclaim but they burst on to the scene with their brand of Stooges indebted garage-punk/psychedelic freakouts right in the middle of Madchester and were well and truly swimming against the tide from day one. I s'pose you could make an argument that Primal Scream took a not entirely dissimilar ...

Now a decade and a half into their career, the Urban Voodoo Machine have very much become an institution of the British alternative music scene in recent years. Their style of throwing everything from New Orleans ragtime to East European folk influences into the melting pot really does mark them out as a one-of-a-kind band and their legendary Gypsy Hotel club nights in North East London were a regular haunt of this writer during his first year or two living in the capital. Indeed, if anything, this tribute album to the UVM is a fond throwback to those long wasted nights at places like the Lexington near Kings Cross or Barden's in Dalston watching whoever the Voodoos had decided to book this month. The Great Malarkey (always a personal favourite) get things off to a fine start with a suitably chaotic tear through Orphan's Lament  followed by Jim Jones' swampy blues take on Killer Sound and the Future Shape Of Sound (another band whose last album really deserves a look if you...