Defunct Brighton experimental jazz rockers Vile Imbeciles have released their entire back catalogue on iTunes and Spotify for the first time ever.
To refresh yourselves, above, you can check them out playing ‘Rolling In Ice Cream’ at Art Club 44 in Kiev in November 2011. Vile Imbeciles were the brainchild of Andy Huxley, guitarist and songwriter in Piano Wire, and former guitarist and songwriter with 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster. Huxley left the band at the height of their cult success due to creative differences, in order to make a (magic) band yet more gothic and recondite still.
VI put out four excellent albums on White Heat, TVI and Cargo between 2007 and 2011: …Ma, Queenie Was A Blonde, Death Jazz and D is for W.
Go to iTunes here to check out their work and Spotify here to do the same. Below is a press release written by Huxley in 2011, ahead of the release of D is for W, which illustrates Vile Imbeciles’ raison d’etre and subsequent endeavour.
“Hi. My name is Andy Huxley and I started this band. I was born in Manchester on January 3rd 1983. I am 28 years old. It was a 28-hour labour. I remember being about 17 years old and sitting in an office with a big record company boss pointing his finger at me and saying, If you can write songs like that I want to be a part of it. The song he was talking about I wrote that summer sitting on my bed. It took five minutes to write. When I started this band seven years later I sat on my bed and wrote a song called Slack Hands. It took two days to write. I pushed myself to my absolute limit. An album, Ma, followed. NME gave it 2/10. Kerrang! gave it 4/5. About 2000 people liked it, and I said goodbye to about 148,000 fans. I went back to my Dad's house and wrote an album called Queenie Was A Blonde. I actually sweated when I wrote it. We went on stage about 200 times and threw ourselves around with bloody determination. I got about 200 consecutive headaches. People seemed to understand it even less.
"Then we wrote another album called Death Jazz. We released it as a B-side. It took me 45 hours to write the guitar part. People said they were disappointed. I went and got a job. I worked in an insurance company in the complaints department. I started at 8am every morning. People would scream and shout at me over the phone. After about six months of doing that I heard the man who sat next to me saying down the phone, D.. No, D. D as in W... No, D. D for W... D is for W. I really understood. We built a studio in an old abandoned bank in Elephant & Castle. Two of the band left. They couldn t take it anymore. I gave up. Evan and Caz held it together. They went out and found two of the best musicians I have ever worked with. At the last minute I wrote about 10 songs, in about two weeks. They were the best songs I had ever written. Everyone agreed.
"Evan and Caz locked themselves in the bank and figured it all out. I took the album home and started recording the vocals. In the middle of recording them I collapsed in the street. The paramedic said I was stressed and I was drinking too much coffee. Everyone that worked on this record went mad. I m not joking. It was bloody intense. It is by far the best thing I have ever done. It mixes every single band I love into one. It is a reference to everything I love but it is totally individual, and it all came out of a severe inner struggle. It is completely positive and it is perfect. I really hope you like what we've done. This album is the main event of my life. I can say that with absolute conviction. It is simultaneously brave and genre-less, but at the same time it sounds like it is part of everything that has come before. Also, people do not realise how important Sly Stone is. I don't know what we'll do next. Maybe nothing.”
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