Thursday, 29 January 2009

Hypechester



In the wake of the whole Hypechester thing, anybody with a guitar, a pair of Joe Bloggs flairs, a bowl haircut and a Mancunian accent could be signed to a record label on these attributes alone. There were some really terrible records that came out on the coat tails of the Mondays and the Stone Roses.
I'm not saying that the High are one of those but they were formed by Andy Couzins, who had been a member of the Stone Roses and their sound is not dissimilar, it has that jangly Byrds thing going on. The music is nothing earth shattering but compared to some of the dross coming out at the time it is pretty good.

The first track was a single and is also on the first album Somewhere Soon.

The High - Up & Down

The second track, if I remember correctly had to be withdrawn from sale for some alleged attempts to nobble the charts or didn't chart because of the allegations, or something. However I could be completely wrong and have just made that up but I'm sure I read it somewhere at the time.

The High - More

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I reckon these songs stand up fairly well. Box Set Go is good too. Loved some of the lp when it came out, saw them live at Liverpool Poly and they were pretty good. You're right about the attempt at chart nobbling. They came back with a grunge influenced second lp which was dreadful, and sold 16 copies. But they were briefly a cut above the rest of the second wave of post Roses/Mondays bands. Thanks for posting these.

drew said...

Thanks Swissadam for verifying I'm not going mad. Got the lp also 12" of Up and Down, Box Set Go and Take Your Time which is the Martin Hannett sessions, will have to post that at some point.

Anonymous said...

Played the lp last night. Take Your Time still sounds good.