WORKING MEN'S CLUB Vinyl & CDs

Review: Are Working Men's Club the best band to have emerged from northern England in the past decade? We'd say there's a very, very good chance. Catch them live on stage and Sydney Minsky-Sargeant, Liam Ogburn, Hannah Cobb and Mairead O'Connor are utterly captivating, and their combination of post punk, rock, electronica, and acid house transfers very well onto record too. Their DJ sets, for which 'Syd' leads the charge, are also nothing short of quality. Informed by genre-less masters such as Andrew Weatherall, Ivan Smagghe and Erol Alkan, as this latest Megamix goes to show, the idea is to create these deeply immersive cosmic soundscapes that aim directly for the dance floor, taking phrases and sounds from their songs, reworking, rethinking and rearranging them into something fresh and high energy. Impossible not to make an impact.

Review: Todmorden quartet Working Men's Club have long held a soft spot for Sheffield, with much of their music being recorded in the city under the watchful eye of producer Ross Orton. It makes perfect sense, then, that they'd commission an EP full of reworks from Steel City producers. Toddla T kicks things off in fine fashion via a rave-igniting, dancehall-tinged SoYo bass rendition of 'Money Is Mine' tailor-made for the city's Kabal parties, while bleep & bass godfathers Forgemasters deliver a drowsy, atmospheric, post-industrial deep house tweak of 'The Last One'. Elsewhere, Diseasa opts for an angular, industrial electro flex on a fuzzy re-wire of 'Rapture', Orton squelches his way through a tough-as-steel acid house remake of 'Plays', and Charla Green gives 'Fear Fear' a dystopian post-jungle makeover.

Review: If you've been keeping an eye on the COVID-19 musical landscape a few things will be clear by now - much is in pieces, and Working Men's Club's debut album, arguably this year's most anticipated, has been postponed until October. You might also have picked up on the fact they made this pandemic party megamix available to stream for free for one week over summer, meaning it's probably scored a few living room moments already.

The release is basically 21-minutes of seamlessly melded synthdom taken from a full record which, as yet, hasn't really been heard save for a few tasters. And the result is perhaps the best example of the intensity, energy and drive that defines every one of the band's fabled live performances. Synth-punk-elec-indie packing huge sounds, finely tuned details and an overall forward atmosphere.