Scritti Politti Cupid And Psyche 85 Rar
Best new reissue
This career-spanning best-of from Green Gartside's influential avant-pop project reveals the depth of his vision and keen intelligence in a succinct package.
Cupid & Psyche 85 '1985. Scritti Politti. Download FLAC $3.95. Scritti Politti - A Little Knowledge. Scritti Politti - Don't Work That Hard. Scritti Politti - Perfect Way. Album: Cupid & Psyche 85, Artist: Scritti Politti. Year 2016, Length: 9. Alternative rock music — download from RedMP3. Album: Cupid & Psyche 85 — 2016 — Scritti Politti. Release date.
For the sleeve of their first single, 1979's '4 A Sides', Scritti Politti opted not for a picture but instead showed a breakdown of costs-- every element of the record's production itemized. This kind of fascination with and demystification of the rock process seems like an orthodox post-punk move, very of its time. But it also revealed for the first time one of the unifying threads in Scritti's career-- an idea that things become more interesting when they're broken down, and that what's on the surface can reveal that stuff, not obfuscate it. As breakthrough single 'The 'Sweetest Girl' put it, 'The strongest words in each belief/ Find out what's behind them.'
Scritti Politti Discography
Of course in 1979 the idea that a motley of squat-dwelling politicos like Scritti Politti might have a breakthrough single-- let alone a three-decade career and a best of package like Absolute-- would have been preposterous. The motor for this compilation, as its title and lopsided sequencing makes quite clear, is Scritti's string of singles from their Cupid and Psyche 85 album, produced by Arif Mardin. Most were hits in Britain, and 'Perfect Way' made them brief stars in America too. But even after a string of 80s revivals, nothing sounds quite like them. It's that Scritti principle again, break things up and they get more interesting. This is pop exploded, fractured and rebuilt as a mosaic where almost every beat seems to have a different sound from the one before. Hi-hats, triangles, drum pads of every kind flicker across the mix for a second or two then never reappear. In fact the tracks hold together only thanks to Green Gartside's deceptively light voice and sweet melodic touch, making songs like 'Hypnotize' and 'Wood Beez' into exhilarating sculptures rather than a swingers party for drum presets.
Green Gartside's journey-- from post-punk ideologue to minor pop princeling, then into productive obscurity-- is so interesting that a chronological overview seems an obvious choice for a best of. So, perhaps inevitably, Absolute is no such thing. After seducing you with mid-80s glitz, it bounces forward to 1999's hip-hop influenced comeback, then returns to the post-punk source before finishing with new material. This hopscotch approach can work oddly well, bringing out commonalities as well as differences-- when the gossamer 'Brushed With Oil, Dusted With Powder' jumps into the similarly mazy but far starker 'Skank Bloc Bologna', for instance. But frontloading the candyfloss brings disadvantages too. 'Oh Patti (Don't Feel Sorry For Loverboy)', their slickest but also saddest song, gets lost in the sugar rush.
'Oh Patti' boasts a gorgeously ornamental Miles Davis horn solo, and because Scritti Politti turns so much on Green Gartside's vision and intelligence it's easy to overlook what a fine collaborator he is, with an ability to find just the right partner to make a good track special. There are song-transforming turns here from Robert Wyatt, Shabba Ranks, and Mos Def, the latter on two tracks from 1999's Anomie And Bonhomie. Here Gartside's presence is more spectral, his voice like perfume over a hip-pop fusion which has aged surprisingly well. These experiments worked because Gartside's concern for how a track's components fit also includes his knowing when to drop into the background. But it's a shame that Absolute misses the finest result of Gartside's passion for hip-hop, 2006's 'The Boom Boom Bap', a love letter to the genre which is also one of Scritti's most enchanting tracks.
To represent 21st century Scritti we instead get two enjoyable unreleased tracks, the fruit of a recent reunion with 80s collaborator Dave Gamson. 'Day Late And A Dollar Short' finds Green draping himself delightfully over Britney-esque mecha-pop. 'A Place We Both Belong' matches a soul-searching Gartside vocal to an R&B slow jam bump. This grappling with modern pop could herald an intriguing new direction, or it could be a dead end like 1991's brief go at pop-ragga (represented here by 'She's a Woman'). With Scritti Politti, you never quite know.
But no matter what Green Gartside's next step it's good to hear him still so engaged with current music. He is a publically smart, well-read guy-- a rarity in pop then and now-- and it's easy to focus on a band's intellectual side when one of their most infectious and witty songs is called 'Jacques Derrida'. But Green's gift wasn't just to namedrop continental philosophy. Starting with 'The 'Sweetest Girl' he found an emotional translation of it within pop, building catchy songs out of curiosity and doubt, taking the collapse of certainties and turning it into heartbreak. For all its erratic sequencing and missing pieces, Absolute is a joy: It works as a collection of often thrilling singles, but it also succeeds as a history of Green Gartside's open-- minded approach to pop, and of his love of it.