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Wednesday 31 July 2013

The Penny Black Remedy - Inhale... Exhale... OK, Now you can panic.

Some bands are blatantly unwilling to be categorized.
They have a perverse need to wander off on a tangent just when others think they have managed to wrap their heads around them.
The Penny Black Remedy are like that.
Balkan folk can effortlessly slide into some country styled ska with nary a consideration for the discombobulation that may cause for those who are not open to changes of pace and being wrong footed at every turn.
However if you are the type who loves the thrill of leaping into the great unknown then this is the band for you.
Each track as it reveals itself is the aural equivalent of a jack in the box bursting forth to shout 'surprise'.
Nothing is as it seems, but all the disparate parts are stitched together so well you can barely see the join.
The album itself is reminiscent of a long corridor with doors lined up on either side and if you open one it's a scene from a spaghetti western playing out, three down on the left it's a niteclub in Berlin circa 1942, next door is the guys from Madness jamming with a polka band and across from that there's a room full of Russians playing a drinking game with Chas and Dave.
Not a lot of it makes any real sense when you look directly at it, but it all casually sits on the periphery rather comfortably just getting on with celebrating it's differences.

So in short let's just agree that it's brilliant and accept that being different is actually pretty cool.  

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