Craig Stephen's been dreaming of long summer nights and barbecues on the deck ...
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My first aural
stimulation by Mungo’s Hi-Fi was at the esteemed One Love festival held at a velodrome
in Wellington during the hot summer of 2010, when a pair of peely-wally Glaswegians
caught the mood of what was ostensibly a reggae festival but had broadened out
to include the likes of Don McGlashan and Sola Rosa.
It was only last
year that I re-discovered the by now much expanded soundsystem through a
contribution on the excellent Puffer’s Delight compilation album - reggae, dancehall, dub et al brewed in
Scotland which was also released by Scotch Bonnet.
More Fyah features Eva
Lazarus, a new name to me, but I doubt she will be to the legions of dancehall,
grime and reggae fans in the UK. It seems a logical move. Lazarus’ nifty vocal
style matches a duo prepared to mix and match, delving into just about every
style you’ll hear in any ethnically diverse suburb of inner London.
The dream team
begin proceedings with a cover of the S.O.S. Band’s ‘Just Be Good To Me’, re-nosed as ‘Dub Be Good To Me’. They’re not the first act to have had the
same idea - Norman Cook’s Beats International did so in 1990, reaching No.1 in
the British chart, at a time when that still meant something. Perhaps it might
be more appropriate to call it a take on Cook’s classic.
On the bass-heavy ‘Babylon Raid’, Mungo’s weave a sample
of Max Romeo’s 1970s roots reggae anthem ‘Three Blind Mice’ around Lazarus’s furious attack on
unsympathetic police tactics with a mock sample of a flat foot’s warning about
noise control thrown in for good measure. The title track is a ragga party
banger with summer barbecues in mind, while ‘We Weren’t Made For This’ is a scorching ska bomber, celebrating
ditching a shitty job and finding somewhere nice to explore: “never designed
for a nine-to-five, Monday to Friday, stay alive,” sings Lazarus as she
prepares to pack a bag.
Mungo’s and Eva
are reminiscent perhaps of Audio Active, the underrated Japanese
dub/electronic/ hip-hop act retro-reviewed on these pages recently, in that
there are no barriers, no walls to hold them back, and a world to explore. I’d
like to say this could be one of the albums of the year but it isn’t without
its irritating moments, and on the last two tracks, most notably ‘Warrior Code’, which doesn’t
offer much new, I’m already thinking of which tracks I can repeat play.
Nevertheless, it’s
an intriguing and worthy release during a year that hasn’t offered too many
killer albums as yet.
