So there I was feeling rather pleased with myself after diagnosing the fault on a rather beautiful Beocord 8002 cassette deck – replace one blown internal fuse and it was duly raised from the dead – when I started to wonder what would be perfect cassette to test out this newly resurrected eighties beauty. Time to stick my hand back in the box of recently purchased cassettes and pull out something glittery. Something like “Would You Be There For Me?” by Hypnotic Kingdom released by Glasgow label CUSP Recordings as, while the box is conventional and clear, that cassette shell has sparkly gold bits in it. They say that if you smoke enough crack then you will think that Jesus told you to do it. Faith, like a small cassette based label, works like that.
To the music. Well, this isn’t music for the flighty and intensity abounds and rebounds commensurate with the cool determination of a man with more on his mind than the price of potatoes. This isn’t, however, intellectual posturing or another modern day opportunity to deep dive into the bottomless melancholy of self. This is more like a downbeat Jonathan Richman driven to sing about the monotonic consequences of rainy days in London. Or Boston or somewhere else where shadows outnumber the sunshine. That said, this album proves to be curiously compelling so perhaps Hypnotic Kingdom has his finger on the pulse of today after all.
The cassette is available from Bandcamp.