Shake Summation

Rip It Up, Issue 118, 1 May 1987, Page 34

Shake Summation

Herbs ‘Sensitive to a Smile’ (Warrior 7’) Classy seductive soul rather than the Pacific sound of old. As good as any of the soft soul that has dominated our Top 20 recently. With an acoustic piano to the fore, a great melody, and restrained delivery building to a passionate climax. Excellent — listen for it on a jukebox near you. ‘Station of Love’ is a catchy piece of light reggae (a singalong for children?) celebrating the reggae train. The album should be a crowd pleaser. Murder Inc. ‘Carbine’ (Rational 12”) Recorded live at Kent House with no overdubs, and the result is a consistent, fast, furious and murky EP that has an uncomporomising “take us or leave us” tone to it. ‘Death and Resurrection Show' is the pick, dark like the Velvets. Mark Brooks plays an excellent bass but his affected tough guy vocal is off-putting. This EP is more effective than the Murders live — you can't see the posing —

but two songs woulda been quite enough. Chris Bourke ; Simon Vita ‘Rites of Spring’ c/w Michael Dwyer ‘Rubber Necking’ ; (F Star 77) : Two interesting side projects from the prolific Wasp Factory gang. Both work over fairly similar territory, with ‘Rites of Spring’ being just as “rubbery” as the catchy but inane ‘Rubber Necking, which isn't quite enough to work well, whereas Martin Kirk gets to provide a lot more instrumentation on the other side, and Ross Revington lets his double bass go “boing!” circa 'B4 Cure. $4.99 from 110 Stout St, Gisborne. ‘

Putty in Her Hands : ‘ ‘Trick of the Light’ (Jayrem 12”") Two Wellington-based women with high-grade classical and jazz credentials make up Putty in Her Hands. Charlotte Yates and Christine Jeffs create warm pop music with the accent on mood, aided by Allison Wallace’s violin, Debbie Frame on sax and Tim Hunt on drums. Collecting odd images along the way, searching tongue-in-cheek for love, the words help build the ambience, whilst the sax drives songs like ‘Walk With My Dreams’ right into a good groove, with ‘Mess it Up’ being the most bouyant of a hearty quintet of songs (including

Bowie's ‘Repetition), recorded nice and up-front at Frontier. A fine, bright debut.

The Max Block (Flying Nun 12") These six songs were recorded at Nightshift in October last year, the Max Block having emerged from the ruins of sonic terrorists Scorched Earth Policy in about July — a promising pedigree .... The Max Block’s best songs, ‘Black Fish’ and ‘Sonic Blur, are full of warped fun. When they thrash, they thrash (‘Burn David Burn) and when they get dense ... well, you try listening to ‘Psychic Discharge’ Though | like this, the production is not up to the standard of SEP’s Going Through a Hole, and I'll be looking for something really exciting on the Max Block's next effort. .

Paul McKessar