Urban Guerillas
–Big Brother: Say Cheese!
Single on Watchful Eye Label
Every year, Ken Stewart’s Urban Guerillas
put something out to remind us that they are still with us, in one incarnation
or another. But I can say that this year’s line-up is musically the best so
far, even though there are only two songs on which to base that opinion.
Big Brother (the song) is a reminder that (the other) Big
Brother’s origins date back to the 1940s, and has nothing to do with a
number of people being locked in a room, jiggling their (bare) arses whilst the
world watches (mostly in horror). It is also a suggestion that the sad state of
private affairs that George Orwell suggested we may be living
with at about this time in history are slowly but surely becoming more truth
than fiction.
And to aid in the Orwellian theme, this CD is
enhanced with an e-book copy of 1984. This helped me realise what I was doing wrong when it comes to ~pdf files: I have Adobe Acrobat version 2.0! So after spending 40min downloading version
5.0, I now have three copies of the famous story by George Orwell about life in
the 1980s, as seen in 1949.
Stating The Obvious continues suit musically, with some
brass-sounds in the middle-8 that don’t appear to be credited… am I just
imagining them? It does add some depth to what is otherwise the A of this AA
release. And Anthony (bass) Waugh and Mick
(drums) Elsley also chime in with
backing vocals, no doubt aided by Ken, that suggest the brass wasn’t
the only uncredited appearance hereon.
All of this is presented by a three-piece Urban Guerillas
that is quite musically adept: Anthony’s bass licks and runs add
splashes of colour to this Soundtrack to the Revolution. And while Ken’s slightly out-of-tune guitars
persist, this time it is to create the effect that is Urban Guerillas’
industrial-diamond-in-the-rough presentation that we look forward to in next
year’s release!