So, you like John Foxx and the Maths? and you like those two great albums by Pink Floyd? so making a trip into town especially to buy a copy of MOJO is a no-brainer right?
Hmm, 'wish I'd stayed here and not gone there', or at least kept off the grass from the lunatics, cos this 'album' is truly abysmal.
Putting aside for the moment the argument that one should never remake a classic created by another artist - and DSOTM is undoubtedly one of those works - the heart and blood of Pink Floyd's idiosyncratic art at a towering peak, and of course if certain styles of music don't appeal to you then you'll be unable to embrace all of the styles present on this mixed bag, or 're-booted' as MOJO describe it, and thus, I'd like to boot some of its tracks all the way up to the dark side of the moon forever.
John and Benge thankfully are one of the saving graces here for me, one of the few attempting any difference - the only thing that didn't gell I felt with their take on Have A Cigar stemmed solely from the Floyd camp, the original lyrics just don't seem to do John's vocabulary any justice. Also, it seemed that although the song was on the right path it was not quite there yet, well mystery solved, having got the admission from MOJO that they screwed up, after downloading and hearing the tastier version that should have been on the disc its clear that John and Benge tweaked that Floyd track into a worthy addition to the Maths studio style.
As for the rest of the disc, well, its personal taste of course, its the indifferent, the bad, and the good on my ears:
Gallops Speak To Me, and The Oscillation's On The Run, are instantly forgettable, and Neville Skelly's Brain Damage was plain boring. The verdict is still out for me with The Last Hurrah's easy listening version of The Great Gig In The Sky - though I do like the sound of lounge, so I'm likely to play this one again. The Orb, who I liked last century up until their lame Pomme Fritz album, put in a nicely dubby but overall lazy version of Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part Two.
Annoyingly, I like the music on Breathe and Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part One but Our Broken Garden and Malachai respectively spoil it all for me with their unavoidable and potentially irritatingly weak female vocals, and then Lia Ices goes one better, or worse rather, with its singer trashing Wish You Were Here.
Wolf People had me racing for the off switch with their pubrock Time, as does the Pineapple Thief's Money, and Of Arrowe Hill had me reaching for the shotgun and blasting my CD player at point blank range to obliterate from memory that goddamn awful version of Eclipse.
It leaves only four tracks from this venture that I'd happily play on repeat, Beak> with their Welcome To The Machine and its Wire/Elastica influenced tempo, which leads smoothly into John and Benge's contribution. The biggest unexpected surprise for me was finding myself loving Doug Paisleys Us And Them (there's a kind of Besnard Lakes quality to it that appeals to me), and this is followed really neatly by Matt Berry's short but trippy Any Colour You Like.
