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Biting Tongues After the Click (Retrospective 1980-89) [LTMCD 2371]

After the Click is a comprehensive career overview drawing from all phases of the Tongues' career between 1980 and 1989, including several tracks not released on any other CD. Stand-out tracks include Heart Disease, Compressor, Double Gold St Paul and Everywhere But Here, the latter performed live at The Venue in April 1983. The anthology was compiled by founder member Graham Massey, later of 808 State.

"Like many of their contemporaries, including the Pop Group, Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA, the Tongues' music was a maniacal melange which drew on John Cage, JG Ballard, Captain Beefheart, WS Burroughs etc, co-opting and inverting the exuberance of funk to provide an agitated, cut-up and noirish yet vivid critique of a society apparently on the verge of 1984 for real... The dialectical wheel has come full circle and the Tongues, in the present day context, in which we've unlearned how to take them for granted, are as exhilarating and urgent as ever.". (David Stubbs, The Wire, 07/2003)

CD booklet contains full recording information and a detailed band history.

Tracklist

1. R.R.O.R.
2. Heart Disease
3. You Can Choke Like That
4. Reflector
5. Denture Beach
6. Dirt for 485
7. Iyahbhoone *
8. 44
9. Aair Care
10. Evening State/Lock Up State
11. Feverhouse Pt. 1
12. Meat Mask Separatist
13. Compressor
14. Double Gold St Paul
15. House of Hatchets
16. Everywhere But Here (live)

Available on digital (MP3 or FLAC). To order please select correct shipping option and click on Add To Cart button below cover image. Digital copies are delivered to customers via link sent by email.

After the Click [LTMCD 2371]
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Reviews:

"For a true sense of what the Tongues were about, After the Click is indispensible, with the excellent, exhaustive sleevenotes we've come to expect from the LTM label" (Uncut, 11/2003)

"Staggeringly fine" (Magnet, 03/2005)

"An essential document, not to mention a reproach to those pop historians who caricature 1980s music as all poodle-haired hedonism and daft Goth, airbrushing out the the sort of harrowing and exhilarating undercurrent of which Biting Tongues were a part" (The Wire, 09/2003)

"It's the sound of early 80s Manchester, where punk was being beaten up by funk, with the musical punch-ups being recorded by the Tongues and their peers, bands like Clock DVA and Cabaret Voltaire" (DJ Magazine, 08/2003)

"An early 1980s soup of jazz-funk rhythms, spoken word lyrics and crispy production sound that has aged remarkably well. There's something darkly attractive about their music - uncompromising is the word, but without bands like this music cannot develop" (Leonard's Lair, 07/2003)

"A perfect introduction. What appeals to me most about their sound and other appealing contemporaries like 23 Skidoo, A Certain Ratio, James Chance and Liquid Liquid is the loose attitude, vibrant energy, tight rhythm section, and a sparse arrangement that doesn't cloud the sound with too much junk" (Brainwashed, 05/2003)