Mega Breakfast - The Chap

This was a total find. Unbelievably good fortune. Browsing through Fopp one day i found it in the Dance section, stared at it, read the 'John Peel' review and looked at the track titles. Something about the phrase, "Proper Rock for Real Folk" drew me in. I listened to it, thought it was OK and then played it again a couple of days later.

Then i was totally screwed. There's something faintly ridiculous about the whole thing. It seeps in very easily and, like Mr. Tickle, can't help but go for those parts of the body that make you giggle and jerk your body unexpectedly. This is a very funny album. It's also packed full of great ideas, unusual rhythms, and the odd, spectacular blast of rock guitar. It's a genuine example of how well electronica and rock can work together.

There is a real sense of people at work here. Not casually. Not too cool for school. There's nothing off hand about it. There's a degree of restraint but only because anything else would detract from the overall feel of what they do. And when they let go, it just flies. The vocals are consciously sung in very clipped, very English tones: partly for effect, and partly because that's exactly what is needed. Darnce Floor, not dance floor.

Mega Breakfast is complete. It starts, and finishes, and you feel like you've heard everything they wanted to do at that time. It's also perverse. Neat lawns, academic institutions, and kids with too much money discussing debauchery just moments before a career at the bar. Self assured and with the heritage to back it up should they get into trouble with the law at some stage.

I played this to Chaz, who thought it may be what the Cardiacs were now up to. This is entirely understandable (and if you've not heard any, R.E.S. is the place to get a good start with them). It's lunatic and critical. The beats are incredibly tight but allow themselves to trip over their own feet, all the while ticking metronomically. It is the feel of the Cardiacs without the potential for striking absolute terror into your heart and leaving you with a sense that the world is indeed ruined. The Chap do it with a cool gaze, but the kind of cool that makes you want to be them, and makes you trust their judgement. You'd buy them a drink, not throw it at them.

The use of sound is humourous and gleeful, like a teenager on LSD coming to the realisation that normality is ludicrous, and spouting adolescent rhetoric with wit and passion. They sample what can only be a ruler being twanged on a school desk. How can that not be joyful? Now imagine a band performing this, bleeps, sampled violins, and occasional impersonations of the Red Army choir singing in English.

Come on, Come on cloner,
Clone me another me,
My generation needs another me.
Me and me...
Hearts of gold, bodies of lust,
Forbidden love reach the stars...

And when they sing 'stars' you arrive at a questioning peak in their discourse. It is a three dot statement...

Come into my Discopad. Caution me with your slippers.

And then restrained, spooky, lightly picked guitar. Gradually building to a clean rock frenzy, drums in time and out of synch. Coughing up phlegm. Scratched sounds, monotonous delivery, all insinuating a dangerous lust too polite to scream, wanting so much to reach that point.

Hello! Hello!
Blood Blood Blood.
We will perform surgery.
Your body has things that throb.
Hello! Hello! Surgery.

Clinical, detached. Shagging on the bonnet of a Bentley. Not a mark on the bonnet when you've finished.

Oh! Where's my soul gone?
Oh! Where is home?

Wuss Wuss is just gorgeous. Beautifully sung and yearning. Four minutes away from all the stress to smoke a cigarette and reflect. Not beaten yet. But longing for something. At the start of listening to the album you would not expect a tune like that to appear. When it does, it fits perfectly. It also confirms that you are in the presence of truly wonderful music.

Outer space is not a better place, Grace
Proper Rock for Real Folk,
Art Art Art, don't make no rave, Dave
Proper songs about girls and clubbing.

As they say themselves: proper songs, real emotions.