January 4, 1999
London Camden Falcon
A clutch of cool-ish escapees from various global villages, [a]Alchemicals[/a] offer a suitably curious palette of colours, too: much like [a]Warm Jets[/a]there is a dignity and drive to [a]Alchemi
There is a rumour doing the rounds tonight that a member of Alchemicals was previously in a band who were signed to a major label for such a brief, disastrous period of time that the only fruits of the relationship was half a single.
Fair play to his new outfit, then, who have gone one big step further and are currently fevering numerous brows with their splendid debut Blue Dog single, 'Information Centre'. It sounds grand here, too, a luscious guitar noise with more subtlety and sophistication than the toilet circuit often deserves.
A clutch of cool-ish escapees from various global villages, Alchemicals offer a suitably curious palette of colours, too: much like Warm Jets there is a dignity and drive to Alchemicals' music which makes it furiously hard to pin down. We know it harks back to past glories whilst sounding like the music of tomorrow. We know that the warm surges of keyboard come from the hands of a man - Lloyd Russell - who rather splendidly makes like Brian Eno locked in a very strange bathroom.
We also know that tonight Alchemicals only play for something like 20 minutes, which is about as miserly as it gets when you're still trying to get your tiny little mind around the basic premise of the first song. Bastards.
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