Castle Music UK
2001
London, England
About This Album
Encompassing the band's seven-year career, London, England takes in the entirety of the first three albums, a few single sides, and a sampling of the final two albums. That's 40 tracks of acid jazz. Debut album Dead Man Cat led the way in the early '90s for a love of all things Hammond and groovy. Yes, when the James Taylor Quartet had veered toward commercial contemporary soul, Corduroy focused on the 1960s soundtrack vibe (that unfortunately everyone now associates with Austin Powers). This was 1992 though, and their love of filmic music was ahead of the trend. Dead Man Cat is magnificent and reeks of everything fascinating about late-'60s and early-'70s movie scoring: Hammond, bongos, fuzz guitar galore. And the thing is it's not ironic. Corduroy plainly loves this music and recreates the atmosphere and sound with ease. The second album, although a cheeky parody of a late-'60s swinging London movie's soundtrack (the band wrote the music around an imagined scenario) is again far beyond plagiarism and ably captures the mood and feel of the era. The opening sequence "High Havoc" is peppered with funky electric piano and the type of fuzzy lead guitar that the De Wolfe Association favored (a company that supplied the majority of the incidental music heard in late '60 British films).
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 1,2,7,12 and 17)

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Disc 2

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