White
Town - Peek & Poke
The
full-length follow up to Women In Technology, which sold
300,000+ "units" in North
America
The "story" is well-documented.
White Town-essentially the Indian-born, Norwich, England,
residing Jyoti Mishra-released a four song EP on Parasol
in 1996 that was picked up by a major label and contained
the eventual #1 worldwide hit "Your Woman." In
1997 the band, discovered by the press to be one hefty bloke
instead of a few svelte pin-ups, delivered new demos to the
major and was politely let go. Since then White Town has
released the "Another Lover" single on Parasol,
and recorded the full-length follow up to the mega-selling
Women in Technology album.
In
May 2000 Parasol will release Peek & Poke. The twelve tracks include White Town's latest
single "Another Lover", the Pet Shop Boys-styled "Duplicate",
the church organ-driven dance-pop-gospel of "Every Second
Counts", and an epic 13 minute Kraftwerkian beatbox
diatribe titled "Excerpts From An Essay", featuring
a slippery komputer voice expounding upon the cultural significance
of early hiphop as interpreted by Jyoti's earnestly controversial
Trotskyist ideologies.
White
Town's pre-overnight-sensation album, Socialism, Sexism & Sexuality, previewed Jyoti's
political views and some of the guitar textures that aren't
familiar to fans of Women In Technology. On Peek & Poke
White Town brings all of the band's elements together into
one unifying whole.
Jyoti
explains his motivation for the album title: "There
are peeks at things you maybe don't want to know about it.
There's a lot on here
which shows me for what I am, which is not that great a person.
Not a monster, hopefully, but certainly no bloody saint.
There are pokes at things I hate. And loathe. And detest.
But which seem to be part of being a 'cool' person these
days. Just nodes in the pre-packaged hipness to which we're
all meant to be aspiring."
from The Onion:
Left-field success couldn't have happened to a more deserving artist than Jyoti
Mishra. As the sole member of White Town, the indie stalwart sensibly signed
a one-shot contract with EMI to exploit his extremely catchy synth-pop.
Little did he expect that "Your Woman" and the album Women In
Technology would become such big hits, but, having done far better than
anyone could have predicted, Mishra put his money in the bank and jumped
ship. Or maybe he was pushed.
In any case, White Town's new Peek & Poke finds Mishra back on Parasol,
the independent label that released his first recordings. Proving that nothing
can quite match a major-label marketing push, Peek & Poke doesn't seem
on track to replicate its predecessor's success, but it's got just as much
to offer.
Sticking to his formula of looped synth hooks and drum machines, as well as
Sarah Records-styled low-key pop, Mishra illustrates that home recording can
result in more than just mushy fuzz. Sharp both musically and lyrically, these
songs have a way of sneaking into the subconscious. "Another Lover," "Every
Second Counts," and "Duplicate" skate by on cool electro melodies
and robotic funk beats, while "Why I Hate Drugs," "In My Head," and "I'm
Alone" are gently guitar-driven.
Then there's the sublime trip-hop perfection of "She Left For Paris," a
charmer in any context. But the real conceptual coup is "Excerpts From
An Essay," a Kraftwerk-esque epic that features a club-ready beat and
a disembodied synthetic vocal intoning an academic treatise on the ideological
and sociological ramifications of hip-hop. Some dismiss machine music as too
cold, but in the hands of Mishra, it's simply cool. - Joshua Klein
from Tower Europe - Top Magazine
Perhaps the nicest recipient of a freak Number One hit
in recent memory, Jyoti Mishra - aka WHITE TOWN - used
the considerable proceeds of 'Your Woman' -
a worldwide smash two years ago - to set up his own mini recording empire in
Norwich, and now writes, records and releases records in which he does everything:
plays, sings, and makes the tea. The man's new album, Peek & Poke (Parasol
Records/Bzangy Groink Records) is full of sweet but subtle musical invention
that reveals him as a big fan of pop. Despite an occasional DIY feel, there
is much here to admire: the soft and lilting melody of 'In My Head', the bizarre
fuzz of 'Bunny Boiler', and the rather winsome 'Another Lover'. It's unlikely
that any of these tracks will land him another big hit, but you get the feeling
that Mishra is unconcerned with fighting out chart positions with Steps and
S Club 7.
from The Economist:
Jyoti Mishra and his first single, "Your Woman", from a record called "Abort,
Retry, Fail?", went straight into the British music charts at number one
(only the fourth debut single ever to do so).
Mr Mishra's story is one of persistence. Even the government can take a smidgen
of the credit for his success. Unlike the well-established artists he deposed,
he earned his chart hit the hard way after toiling for years in obscurity.
Performing under the name of White Town, he launched his hit song without the
help of a big record label. "Abort, Retry, Fail?", named after the
error message given by computers, was recorded in his home on second-hand equipment.Chrysalis,
his current record company, signed him only after a British radio station had
begun playing "Your Woman".
Now 30, Mr Mishra has barelyworked since leaving school in 1982. A brief stint
on the government's Enterprise Allowance Scheme, a programme to help the unemployed
which has since been phased out, helped him to set up his own record label,
Satya Records, and to keep recording.
A music addict with an encyclopedic knowledge of musical trends since the 1920s,
Mr Mishra does not plan to succumb to the glitter of the pop industry. He is
already boycotting BBC TV's "Top of the Pops" because, among other
things, its minions were unpleasant to a friend of his. "If success means
that I have to turn into an insensitive megalomaniac, then I'd rather never
be in the charts at all." Geek idealism. |
