Blackest Ever Black presents to you Dead Unique, an album by Officer! recorded
in 1995 but -- outrageously, inexplicably -- never before released into the public
domain. This then is not a reissue or a revival; it's a new record that just happens
to have been maturing in the cask for, oh, a little shy of 20 years. It also happens
to be a lost classic of English art-rock, and the crowning achievement in the career
of its mercurial creator, Mick Hobbs. Londoner Hobbs' roots are in the fecund
RIO scene of the late '70s and early 1980s, initially as guitarist in The Work
(alongside Bill Gilonis, Rick Wilson and Henry Cow's Tim Hodgkinson),
and subsequent related groupings The Lowest Note, The Lo Yo Yo, and The
Momes. Over the course of the decade he became closely associated with This
Heat and their Cold Storage studio in Brixton. Officer! -- the project that this
incorrigible collaborator and connector calls his own -- surfaced in 1982 with a
cassette tape entitled Eight New Songs By Mick Hobbs. It marked the blossoming
of a singular writer and improviser, with a gift for plangent melody, ingenious
arrangement and lyrics at once caustic and courtly, playful and profound (two
songs from this tape, ''Life at the Water's Edge'' and ''Dogface,'' have been
remastered for a forthcoming limited edition 7'' release on Blackest Ever Black).
The Cold Storage-recorded Ossification LP arrived a year later, followed by Cough
(1985) and Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes (1988). Megaphone Records, responsible
for Ossification's recent 30th anniversary reissue, rightly describe it as ''one of the
most unusual, pleasurable and character-filled 'pop' records anyone has heard -- a
timeless anomaly in the history of recorded music.'' By the start of the 1990s
Hobbs had joined Jad Fair's Half Japanese. In the early months of '95, Half
Japanese were in Baltimore to record their Hot LP; Hobbs stayed on to cut the bulk
of the songs that comprise Officer!'s Dead Unique -- songs drawn from a rich store
of material written and refined in the seven years since the band's last outing --
with a talented assemblage of local and visiting musicians. Returning to the UK,
Hobbs brought the tracks to producer Julia Brightly to mix at her 16-track home
studio in Bethnal Green; by the end of the summer, Dead Unique had taken shape.
And then? Nothing. For reasons that no one, least of all Hobbs, can remember,
Dead Unique was shelved, all but forgotten about until 2012, when Blackest Ever
Black chanced upon it while trawling the Officer! archive maintained for Hobbs by
Andrew Jacques. Finally, rightfully, this album is available to all for the very
first time. A complex but thrillingly immediate avant-pop song cycle that charms
and confounds at every turn, Dead Unique will give immense pleasure not only to
Officer!'s existing cult following, but to anyone with an appreciation of piquant,
idiosyncratic songcraft -- fans of Kevin Ayers, Flaming Tunes, Art Bears,
Woo, Dislocation Dance, R. Stevie Moore, Robert Wyatt, Cleaners
From Venus, Lol Coxhill or The Monochrome Set should especially pay
attention. It touches upon ragged-raw rock 'n roll, sumptuous chamber music,
pastoral folk, blowsy prog-jazz and paranoid dub-space, effortlessly shifting from
skronking abstraction to rousing harmonic refrain and back again. The tension
between composition and improvisation is key to the LP's power, with Hobbs
abetted by an extraordinary supporting cast that includes Tim Hodgkinson
(bass clarinet), Pleasant Livers' Fred Collins (vocals), Legendary Pink
Dots' Patrick Q (violin), filmmaker/animator Martha Colburn (vocal), Gilles
Rieder (drums), Jad Fair (vocals) and Jason Willett (bass, keyboards, trumpet).
Special mention must go to John Dierker, whose superbly expressive clarinet
and saxophone parts are a fixture throughout, and to Joey Stack, who takes
lead vocals on ''Good'' and the show-stopping ''Elephant Flowers.'' Nonetheless, it
is the voice of Hobbs -- as principal writer, performer and protagonist of these
songs -- that resonates most powerfully. Blurring the roles of storyteller, poet and
prankster, he turns memorable line after memorable line, booby-trapping them with
mischievous puns, fleet-footed literary allusions, sudden digressions and shifts of
register, nonsense rhymes and other wordplay. But his acute wit and flair for the
absurd is moored by a deep romantic sensibility, and though it delights in the
minutiae of the human comedy, Dead Unique ultimately addresses its biggest
themes: love, loss, commitment, independence, the mutability and inconstancy of
all things.
TRACKLISTING
01. Nest
02. Elephant Flowers
03. It Goes Up/Revenge
04. Go Back
05. Cows Hum in the Fields
06. Shrug/Good
07. Biteman
08. Nardis
09. Someone at the Door
10. Stewed Fruit
11. All I Got
12. V.I.M.
13. Bugs in Amber
14. Guess
15. The Pony Was Contented
16. Lilac and Orange
17. Clint