Fair Ohs 7 track 7″, Pacific Rim: Early Recordings, is officially released today. Available as a strictly limited 7″ on blue vinyl and as a download via iTunes/Amazon et al. The digital version also comes with two bonus tracks not available on the vinyl edition.
The full record can be streamed on Sound Cloud for this week only. Listen below.
Having released their debut album earlier this, east London-based three-piece Fair Ohs return to their roots by issuing their early recordings on 7” and download for the first time. Pacific Rim: Early Recordings compiles eight songs, with a further two bonus tracks available digitally, providing a document of the band’s early experimentations.
More people have heard about Fair Ohs’ early days as a hardcore band with garage punk tendencies than have actually heard the songs from that era. Six of these tracks were released in a limited run of 50 copies with handmade felt covers on Suplex Cassettes, selling quickly and remaining in the hands and tape players of the few rather than the many. Soon after this debut analogue excursion, Fair Ohs started morphing into the band they are today, with a more esoteric set of influences, yet still retaining the punk energy and positivity that drove their early songs and shows.
Pacific Rim… contains all the tracks from the first one-take-to-tape recording sessions with Rory Attwell at Pacific Rim Studios that were on the debut tape, plus two that were due to be released on a split 7″ that never saw the light of day. Completing the line-up are two songs – “Copain Copine” and “Now I Love You” – that came from the same session as tracks that were to feature on their debut record Everything Is Dancing, showing that transition phase that remains a constant feature of Fair Ohs, rather than just a one off.
Released on September 26th by Tough Love, on whom the band have previously released a long since sold-out split 7”, the record features artwork from Male Bonding’s Robin Silas and Dan Reeves of Cold Pumas.
Download a free MP3 of “I’m A Woman, I’m Your Wife” from Pitchfork here.
Track Listing
Side A
1. “I’m a Woman, I’m Your Wife”
2. “Copain Copine”
3. “Now I Love You”
4. “Hospitals”
5. “Get Sun” Side B
6. “Obstacles”/”I’m Following You”
7. “My Spit” Download-Only Bonus Tracks 8. “Good Throats”
9. “You’ve Got Teeth”
A few weekends ago, we had a party on a boat and called it Watery Domestic. CYMBALS and Fair Ohs played. Eleanor McDowall took some photos of it. They’re below.
Since it’s the Tough Love 5th birthday in less than a month, we thought we’d run a series of posts introducing the bands playing and providing a track to download. Here’s the first…
5 years. It feels like a long time. It feels like it went by fast. It feels pretty good, all in all, to have got this far without someone insisting we stop. Either that, or we just didn’t listen to their callow cries.
On the 24th of July we’ll be celebrating this and it wont cost you a penny. Details just below. Between then and now, we’ll be posting some exclusive and long lost songs from the Tough Love archive, as well as previewing the bands to play the party. Keep checking back over the coming weeks for more stuff.
TOUGH LOVE IS 5 – ALL DAYER
Saturday 24th July @ The Stag’s Head, Dalston
The Fair Ohs sound like Paul Simon, but, y’know, punk. It’s surprising, then, that drummer Joe is heavily into 80s R&B. Or maybe it’s not? Everyone hears things differently.
Since Eddy has already made a mix of African music for me for Platform, I asked Joe to do the same for the music he loves. There will be no favourtism here (Matt was going to do one too, but technology let us down). Perhaps it’s not that representative of Fair Ohs, but it’s Monday and these 9 songs of pure fire make the weekend sound like it goes on forever. Here’s Joe in his own words:
“This is a mix of 80s soul music that I grew up listening to through my parents and as an adult have listen to obsessively. The first three tracks are Jam and Lewis productions; my favourite producers. To me everything they touched in the 80s was just pure gold. The first track here by Alexander O’Neal is a slightly different style for them (made in 1990 where they were starting to develop a New Jack Swing influenced style) but shows how powerful Alex is when he is pissed off in contrast to the last track of his on this mix, ‘Sunshine’, where he is just as comfortable with a ballad. I love this man and still go to his shows whenever he is in town (I missed out on seeing him in the 80s, but what could I do, I was a child!).
The tracks by Cherrelle and SOS Band show more typical Jam and Lewis productions, with Terry Lewis’ idiosyncratic p-funk influenced bass parts and Jimmy Jam’s expert ear for amazing chords, and also their use of the 808 drum machine and Oberheim synths. The Womack and Womack track here I love becuase of how sincere and haunting it is . Luther Vandross’ ‘Give Me the Reason’ combines his technically perfect vocal delivery with jagged, almost industrial, drum programming, as does Teddy’s ‘I Never Felt Like Dancing’.
This music doesn’t really influence what I do with Fair Ohs (We got Paul Simon for that!) but I take a lot of influence from this for a futuristic soul group called The One . ”
1. Alexander O’Neal – “Somebody Changed Your Mind”
2. Cherrelle – “Will You Satisfy?”
3. SOS Band – “Just The Way You Like It”
4. Womack and Womack – “Strange and Funny”
5. Bobby Womack – “I Can’t Stay Mad”
6. Morris Day – “Love Is A Game”
7. Luther Vandross – “Give Me The Reason”
8. Teddy Pendergrass – I Never Felt Like Dancing
9. Alexander O’Neal – “Sunshine”
Huw Stephens and his team of real gold were good enough to invite us to be featured as ‘DIY Record Label of the Week’ on their show last night. Quite an honour.
Since we’re only telling you about this now, you will have likely missed Huw reading out my answers to their questions, and hearing them play William‘s “Dilettante” and “Nightcycles” by Seams. But because it’s not 1987 and we’re not still taping the radio for posterity, you can Listen Again (for 7 days at least – history gets shorter) by following the link below. We feature around about the 1hr 33mins 30 secs mark. Roughly speaking.
And one more thing, listen out for a Fair Ohs session to be recorded and aired in the next month or so. Not sure what they’re going to do, but I’m excited about the prospect of new songs.
On Monday 22nd March we’ll be releasing a split single featuring two jams each from Fair Ohs and Spectrals (which you can buy here). You probably know all about this since we’ve hardly shut up about it, but give me a break, it’s cos it’s really good. And you probably know a lot more about the actual release then what it sounds like – that’s cos it’s not out until 22nd March, dummy.
I’d like to think you’ve already found out for yourself, but FYI, Fair Ohs are on a “Paul Simon but punk” vibe and Spectrals sways with blue eyed soul and, according to the girl reading The Stool Pigeon over my shoulder last night, “Teddy Pendergrass and shit like that”. I’m not sure how she could hear that through the ink and paper, but Louis (who’s definitely a boy, Muso’s Guide!) is certainly into soul, doo wop, Motown, girl groups, that kind of thing. You can hear it coursing through the music pretty clearly.
That in mind, I asked him to make us a mixtape collecting together some of his favourite tracks. And he did just that. You can download the entire thing as a zip, with the tracklisting featured below. Thanks to Ralph Wilson for the artwork and obviously to Louis himself for sharing the wealth.
Meanwhile, with the release of said split single coming up quickly over that hill, time’s about right to remind you of this launch night happening in a few weekends time. And here’s that reminder.
Tracklisting:
1. The Fascinations – “The Girls Are Out To Get You”
2. The Cleftones – “Heart and Soul”
3. Shirley J. Scott – “Goose Pimples”
4. The Shirelles – “Baby It’s You”
5. The Opals – “You’re Gonna Be Sorry”
6. The Duprees – “You Belong To Me”
7. The Chiffons – “He’s So Fine”
8. The Ronettes – “How Does It Feel?”
9. The Charmaines – “Whenever I Get Lonely”
10. The Capris – “Tears In My Eyes”
11. The Marcells – “Goodbye To Love”
12. The Vogues – “You’re The One”
13. The Jellybeans – “I Wanna Love Him So Bad”
14. The Chantels – “So Real”
15. Blue Magic – “Look Me Up”
Acting as a neat precursor to the release of TLV035, the Fair Ohs/Spectrals split 7″, Spectrals go out on tour next week with Girls, playing two dates either side of three London shows. It’s a sporadic set of shows, taking in Brighton (Feb 22nd) and Southampton (Feb 25th), then Manchester (Mar 2nd) and Birmingham (Mar 3rd), in a sweet defiance of London-centricism (save the three dates in between, of course).
Significantly, the last of the dates in the capital is an all-day affair launching the zeitgeist-defining (although I know they’ll baulk at the claim) compilation released through Paradise Vendors and Italian Beach Babes; the labels run by Male Bonding and Conan Graffiti Island respectively. Here’s a link to details of that show, which you’d be a little foolish not to attend – there’s about a billion people already confirmed on Facebook as it is, if that means anything. You can also buy the record here, which features, among others, Spectrals, Fair Ohs, Not Cool, and Male Bonding and Graffiti Island themselves. And it’s £8. Deal!
