Music / New Wave
Review: A Certain Ratio, Fiddlers
The funkiest band to come out of Factory Records in the seventies, A Certain Ratio may not wear those old trademark baggy army shorts and vests anymore, but they still play their industrial funk deliciously.
Three of the original line-up are still here, singer and bassist Jez Kerr, trumpeter and guitarist Martin Moorcroft and the drumming funk force and slap bass player extraordinaire Donald Johnson.
A well-attended and appreciative Fiddlers gets engulfed in the storm these Manc stalwarts serve up. One minute it’s the angular jerky stutter of their early single Do The Du, then the atmosphere-laden brassy jazz through-a-wind-tunnel of Rialto, a full-on funk explosion, and into the big funky house feel of 27 Forever.
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Won’t Stop Loving You is pure Factory house with that insistent New Order bass sound, piano, and Kerr’s plaintive vocals contributing to the feel, while Good Together swirls into a big fat palette of bass, sound effects and voice overs, Johnson’s impulsively addictive drumbeat and Denise Johnson’s soaring voice reaching the heights.
Their use of cowbells, wooden blocks and a whistle all add to the communal sense of this band, it’s party, it’s funky, it’s jazzy but it’s also intelligently and inventively constructed and they are totally in command of the audience with such an addictively powerful sound.
Shack Up is greeted hugely as it was one of their finest singles, brass, choppy guitar and big bass. Funkadelic via Manchester. Back to some marvellous disorientation with The Fox, Donald Johnson swapping his kit for some dexterous slap bass and Moorcroft on the sticks.
They end with the glorious Latin cacophony of Si Firmi o Grido, their 1986 single, with whistle, cowbell, wooden block, brass and everything in the house shaking… A Certain Ratio, a definite blinder.
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