Music : Handcream for a Generation

In association with Amazon.com

Rating:

- Supple Grooves
Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres deepen their supple grooves as they move closer to mainstream central on Cornershop's fourth release, Handcream for a Generation. Since When I Was Born for the 7th Time was a formal breakthrough and minor hit thanks to "Brimful of Asha", Handcream for a Generation may feel like a retread. Yet after considerations of newness and chronology are taken into account, this latest may prove to be the better collection. They've mastered a dance-collage technique that makes their peers cry (and look like dolts in the process). Their music no longer flaunts but consumes their influences - disco, Bollywood, hard rock, new wave, hip-hop - and makes a better case for a rainbow coalition than previous rhetoric. Having less to say, these 13 tracks just want to get your Paki-black-Jamaican-white [bottom] moving. Cribbed from their Clinton side-project, "people power in the disco hour" remains their statement of fact. That may sound like party-time idealism, but these hedonists know where to find true equality.

Rating:

- Rock on Ananda & Raise The Medium
My my Tjinder & the lads of Cornershop have outdone themselves with "Handcream for a Generation". You have to love the titles of Cornershop's records.

With "When I Was Born for the 7th Time" we fans were treated & by that I mean really treated to something very refreshing music has to offer.

There were lovely songs such as: "Sleep On The Left Side", "Brimful Of Asha", "We're In Yr Corner", "Good S.", "It's Good To Be On The Road Back Home Again" & many more. Tjinder has a really beautiful voice & really composes his music in a way that complements his voice. This is further proven & demonstrated none other than by the man himself & his crew (Ben Ayres, Anthony Saffery, Nick Simms & Peter Bengry) in the epic new release of "Handcream For A Generation".

I'm glad & proud to say that you can buy this bands record/s without listening to it at the record store as you won't be disappointed long after the purchase & long after the disc has stopped playing as the tunes are stuck inside your head ready for repeated listens.

What the new album has in store:
Lovely intro "Heavy Soup" to kick of the funkiness before we are treated to what is my favorite track on the cd "Staging The Plaguing Of The Raised Platform" (Once again, just all around brilliance here, the guitar is ever so rock n' roll & Tjinder gets kids to sing the chorus which is fantastically done & another thing what an interesting & very catchy name for a song). Then rolls on track 3 which always makes me feel as if I'm in a club. Track 4 the 1st single of the album, while it's not bad I would have gone with "Staging The Plaguing Of The Raised Platform" for the 1st single, then we get more funky tunes such as "WWW", a slice of reggae on "Motion The 11" & a very groovy version of "People Power." After all this we get treated to music that could be classified as world before more funkiness & alas "Spectral Mornings" (got to love the Punjabi folk he implements). Then comes "Slip The Drummer One" which makes one feel they could dance 24/7 & then the outro of "Heavy Soup" to keep the good happy tune vibrations alive as is present all the way through the cd.

It will be interesting to see what they do with the follow up to "Handcream".

In the next record I would like to hear Tjinder singing more but none the less a top notch effort in all the fun, catchy & quirkiness' is provided for in "Handcream For A Generation" - Get your copy today! ??

More C.Shop funky tunes that are avilable on CD's & Singles include:
Elivs Sex Change
Hold On It Hurts
Woman's Gotta Have It
When I Was Born For The 7th Time
Handcream For A Generation
Brimful Of Asha (Norman Cook Remixes)
Good Ships / Funky Days Are Back Again
Brimful Of Asha (Easy Winners 1 + 2, Mucho Macho Bolan Boogie Mix)
Staging 1 (Green P's)
Staging 2 (Straight Aces)
Lessons Learned From Rocky 1 - 3
Jullandar Shere
Sleep On The Left Side
Wog Remixes
Born Disco, Died Heavy Metal (Rehoused)

Rating:

- a great fresh sound
This album sounds like the guys from Cornershop incorporated their Cornershop sound with the more electronic sounds they created with the band Clinton to produce a "new" Cornershop sound. (They even re-made the Clinton song "People Power" and funked it up a bit)
I like this record. What appeals to me most is the band incorporates a large variety of different sounds and styles from funk and soul to rock, to reggae, to some house and disco. They do a great job of mixing styles from track to track and even within the different songs. The track "Staging The Plaguing Of The Raised Platform" sounds very much like "Brimful of Asha". The rest of the album is very catchy. Its a very easy, enjoyable listen. This is a record you can get up and dance to or just have playing in the back ground while you relax.
My favorite songs are "Motion The 11" which incorporates some great reggae sounds, "Slip the Drummer One", and the Bonus Track.

Rating:

- mine or its ennui
I liked this cd a lot when i first heard it, but gradually mine or its ennui has pared my affection down to two, three or at most four or five songs. Those songs are: Heavy Soup with such slappy bass, Wogs Will Walk has Tjinder Singh sly and laid back in his delivery, the music cobbles together happily, Motion the Eleven has a kind of giddy grope-out to it, Slip the Drummer One with its robotic bandleader doesn't trip itself up, Spectral Mornings is an epic at nearly fifteen minutes, featuring noel gallagher of oasis on guitar, and its various interminglings of sounds and collisions of guitar work, spiralling into more climaxes then anticlimaxes. The rest of the songs after repeated listens seem wash-worn and lacking that first spirited grab.

MM,
april 24/02

Rating:

- The Long Wait Is Worth It!
When Tjinder Singh said he didn't want to rush the follow up to Cornershop's last album "When I Was Born For The 7th Time" it certainly wasn't any sort of understatement. We've been waiting nearly half a decade for this follow up and thankfully the extra time taken in the recording of this c.d. seems to have paid off. There are certain similarties between this c.d. and it's predecessor-they have a pretty distinctive mix of hip-hop beats and funky, fuzzy guitars and most especially Singh's own nondescript, monologue style vocals. There are no outstanding individual tracks like "Brimful Of Asha" or even "Sleep On The Leftside" but what this c.d. has is tracks of far greater consistency then the last one.

It all opens with a funky track where an ageing 'soulster' M.C. delivers a preview of the c.d. and where this group are coming from. It's like 70's hardcore soul/funk. Track 2 is the first of many really good tracks. Funky guitar riff plays out in front of a nice rhythm guitar riff, some swirly old fashioned synths, deep bass, all with Singh's inimitable vocal style and then the chorus he gets the backing of a group of kids. Sounds awfully insipid but believe me the overall sound is much cooler then this sounds-hey even Pink Floyd used kids voices effectively! "Music Plus 1" has a real techno feel to it-even though it doesn't thump along at 90 decibels per-hour-it's more like the sounds you'd hear on a Fat Boy Slim c.d. The first major single "Lessons Learned From Rocky 1 To Rocky 3" comes in next-and what a track this is. It traces the demise of rock music between the years of those two films-it's pretty ingenious stuff. The basic muffled guitar riff is straight out of the 70's and the backing singers give it a funky sound. In the year 2,000 they had worked on a c.d. with George Clinton-well his own influence is to be heard all over track 5-oh complete with a really old sounding hammond organ.

The style completely changes for the next track-at the first mention of Rasta you sort of know where this one may go-the heavy bass drum and reggae style brass section gives the whole sound of c.d. a nice change of emphasis-and the guest vocalist suits this track perfectly. "People Power" is another outstanding track-it has that rhythm guitar that was to be heard on the original version of "Brimful Of..." -you know it's such a simple song but it's pretty hypnotic and catchy. The first ethnic Indian sounds are to be heard on track 8. Boy will the drumming and rhythm of this track simply blow you away. Once again it's one man and his own P.A. system which is delivered in a mixture of Urdu and English. "The London Radar" is a really funky/disco number-amazing bass and guitar and the overall effects just sound like the last days of disco-all this is played behind the backdrop of people arriving into London by plane. Track 10 is simply amazing-it features Noel Gallagher on guitar and it's the second track to use Indian instruments. The thing is this track lasts for a full 14 minutes but I never grew tired of it for one minute. Firstly the melting pot of various influences makes this sound great. I heard this track being played in a record store recently and immediately heads were weaving and bobbing subconsciously back and forth. Track 11 is a little more of heavy vocoder vocals and a slow deep bass sound of hip-hop. The closing track closes off the c.d. in an almost identical style to the way the c.d. starts. So this concludes a very entertaining 60 minutes of music and a triumphant return for Cornershop!

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