Fu Manchu: anger is a strange energy

Back in the midst of time - when the punks got ousted by the ‘Decade of dubious taste’ the 1980s turned out to be - stars were bigger, more important and figuring much more in people’s lives. There was a time when you had to make a real effort to get some culture down your eyes/ears/cranium…

It was also the time when there was less disposable income and making a purchase was conducted with utmost care and dedication. Walkmans were still in their infancy [plus of the brick-size usually] and, combined with a dodgy distribution - talking about Britain, primarily - it was quite an undertaking to track and enrich one’s collection.

Even London was poorly serviced by specialist shops and plenty of ‘cottage-industry’ [the contemporaneous term for plethora of independent labels] releases were tough to track down. In particular if they were on a Scottish or a Sheffield label… Internet and World Wide Web were not even a germ of an idea. Imagine your parents having to mail order singles/EPs from some shop that advertised it in the long-defunct weekly Melody Maker? Or, if you lived in/near London, frequenting Rough Trade shop [on Kensington Park Road in those days] or Beggars Banquet [in Earl’s Court].

It made all those differently coloured releases more precious, more relevant and more life affirming… There also were [compared to today] relatively less releases all round. With minimum exposure - with so few publications and television bypassing it generally - private lives were concealed affairs and quotient of mysticism grew proportionally. In between rare tours you listened to an album and re-listened.

That’s what made icons, heroes, stars that shone our way outta dark [prog] ages! Or screen legends… Accessibility has brought ease and thus familiarisation that continually spoils the impact. Arguably the best movie ever, ‘Citizen Kane’, could be seen maybe once a year on TV; a certain piece of music wasn’t played ad nauseam six weeks before the release to make you sick of it… Whatever you want now - you can order/download it, instantly and that has spoilt the impact.

It is this - once considered ‘brave new’ - world that Fu Manchu have always fitted: there’s always been something nobly independent, unbendingly curious and single-mindedly pursuing alterna-vision… ‘Start The Machine’ continues the proud tradition of exploration and why this band is not more popular then Queens Of The Stone Age will never be clear to this pecan-sized brain.

This is Fu-Manchu’s ninth’s studio album in 14 years, arriving after a three year gap due to the demise of their previous label. That informs this album that is the band’s most aggro and pished-off. 'Srart The Machine' is, alike in the previous cases, the Southern California legend as you haven’t heard 'em before.

8.6/10