[blunderbuss]

Utterly criminal!

For some reason that I can no longer remember I was listening to the stuff on their myspace (http://www.myspace.com/arkaneuk) this morning. I've always been aware of the brilliance of '69', but it seemed like after that one they lost their strange dubbiness, and went for a kind of pop sheen, which didn't hold my interest. However, I'm in a mood to reconsider.

Would anyone care to tell me what post-'69' stuff I should listen to?

[demonrail666]

I think the album 'I' might be worth another listen. I was never that into it at the time but have a feeling it might be more interesting now than it seemed then. '69' I've always liked, along with their EP, 'Lolita', both of which I still think signalled a far more imaginative take on the whole Sonic Youth thing than was the case with what was coming out from bands like MBV. I seem to recall that there was a vague cynicism towards AR Kane (mostly within the music press at the time) with suggestions that they were a kind of industry-manufactured British noise band. That may or may not have been the case but, like The Monkees, they often made far better music than the supposedly 'real' thing. IMO.

[blunderbuss]

I listened to '69' today, and I'd forgotten how much of a "pop sheen", to quote myself, that already has. I tend to remember "Baby Milk Snatcher" and stop there, but there's a lot of quite fairly poppy stuff on there too. Okay, not Stephen "Tin Tin" Duffy, but not a million miles away either.

I think the music press cynicism about them was probably related to one of them being in the advertising industry, which, obviously, meant that he couldn't have had any musical ideas beyond crass commercialism...