Working Men's Club - Minsky Rock Megamix '2021

Tracks list

Working Men’s Club‘s self-titled debut album was due to drop in
June 2020, for reasons obvious, it was postponed to October. Looking at the
blank space left by the postponement, 18 year old wonder-kid frontman Syd
Minsky-Sargeant decided to utilise his free time, in lockdown, and capitalise on
the creative momentum the band has garnered. The result is a 21-minute
continuous ‘MEGAMIX’ that simultaneously acts as a taster and a
condensed electronic reworking of parts of the album.

“Initially it seemed a bit of a crazy idea,” says Minsky-Sargeant.
“To go and remix an album we’ve just made that isn’t even
out yet. But once we got into it we were like, ‘let’s fucking go
for it’. One could of course argue that crazy ideas are what’s
needed in such crazy times but, in reality, what has been produced is less of a
chaotic and scatterbrain idea and more a coherent artistic statement in line
with the band’s perpetual forward momentum.

Minsky-Sargeant teamed up with the band’s producer Ross Orton –
under the moniker ‘Minsky Rock’ – and the pair worked
remotely to create the unique reimagining. “Ross has a studio in Sheffield
and I have a bit of one at home. So I would play a synth part and then send him
the file over and he’d put it into his computer and then bring it up on a
shared screen. I could see his interface and we’d mix it like that. It
was like being in the same room.”

The result is a “reinterpretation rather than a remix” says
Minsky-Sargeant. Over its seamlessly flowing duration, as it unfurls in hypnotic
and infectious grooves – teasing snippets of songs as they weave in and
out – the mix plays out like a classic 12” extended mix. Albeit one
that takes on different forms and explores new terrain altogether. “It
takes a number of parts of the album but different versions [and edits] of the
songs,” he says. “I’ve played new parts on more or less
everything. Some tracks I’ve taken out the guitar parts and re-done them
with synths or replaced bass lines with synths.”

There’s something of a northern lineage that can be traced here too, in
that the 12” band remixes were something of a mainstay of Manchester bands
like New Order and A Certain Ratio, and in a similar spirit, WMC are a new young
band pushing, and crossing, the boundaries of where guitar and electronic music
can interlink and overlap. “It’s free flowing and electronic,
rather than sounding like a band,” Minsky-Sargeant says of the mix.
“It gives an insight into what the record is like, as well as the future
of the band, but it’s also something totally exclusive. It’s very
much its own thing.”

Tracklist:
1.01 - Working Men's Club - Teeth (Minsky Rock Megamix) (4:08)
1.02 - Working Men's Club - John Cooper Clarke (Minsky Rock Megamix) (2:19)
1.03 - Working Men's Club - A.A.A.A. (Minsky Rock Megamix) (2:35)
1.04 - Working Men's Club - White Rooms and People (Minsky Rock Megamix) (2:35)
1.05 - Working Men's Club - Valleys (Minsky Rock Megamix) (1:48)
1.06 - Working Men's Club - Cook a Coffee (Minsky Rock Megamix) (2:35)
1.07 - Working Men's Club - Angel (Minsky Rock Megamix) (1:17)
1.08 - Working Men's Club - Be My Guest (Minsky Rock Megamix) (2:35)
1.09 - Working Men's Club - Teeth 2 (Minsky Rock Megamix) (1:34)

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