For me, everything Adrian Sherwood touches, turns to gold. In my opinion, likely Britain's best producer since Martin Hannett and certainly our most innovative. From the earliest On-U-Sound reggae dub plates through to Tackhead and his amazing work with Mark Stewart, no producer has ever left such an ingenious thumb print as this guy.
Originally, Ministry were just a failing US new wave funk outfit until Al Jourgensen met Belgian industrial techno guru Luc van Acker when producing Revolting Cocks. The resulting sound clash, smothered in Sherwood's heavy treated beats, was this - the seminal Twitch LP.
Taking it's lead from Belgian industrial outfits such as Front 242 and with a little help from On-U buddy Keith LeBlanc on drums, this huge slab of industrial techno-funk was Jourgensen's major label debut. Raher than better it, Weird Al, assumed he was the master of all industrial dirge and fed us crap for the rest of his career.
Tracklisting:
1. Just Like You
2. We Believe
3. All Day (Remix)
4. The Angel
5. Over The Shoulder
6. My Possession
7. Where You At Now?
Repost Coming Soon
I have this feelig I'm going to be leaving lots of comments for you (oh my GOD, the Sudden Sway post!!!) For reference, I shall be known as Crag. Bonus points if anyone knows why.
ReplyDeleteAnyway - I don't need to download this one, because I already own it, but let me say how you absolutely nailed AJ's career with that last sentence. This LP is indeed a masterpiece, but I think at this point in time, the Sherwood-to-Jourgensen ratio split of genius would be running at about 70-30. It's also humourous to listen to CV's Code LP from the follwing year (not nearly as bad an album as some people make it out to be), and notice, hey - I do believe those were Adrian's drums on Twitch - because lo, here they are again.
I promise not to ramble so much in the future. As I said, my head is in a bit of a spin from the Sudden Sway post at the moment...
(PS. It's not actually his major label debut. The very fine With Sympathy was on Arista.)
Thanks for the comment & thoughts. Thanks also for reminding me about the Arista releases, it was always this album which stuck out for me as a Sherwood release on a major. Can' wait to hear what you have to say about Sudden Sway - but I'll give you a few weeks to listen through it all first.
ReplyDelete"Twitch" introduced me to Sherwood's Tackhead sound and was always my favourite Ministry LP. Funnily, a couple of years after it was released I was introduced to Sherwood in Manchester & he didn't seem that interested in it, calling it a "plumbing job" that he did to pay the bills!!
ReplyDeleteNice! I too learned about Sherwood through TWITCH and haven't heard this album in at least 15 years. Thanks
ReplyDelete