A.R. Kane - Up Home (2023) [Hi-Res]

Trailing a reissue of their all-timer album ’69’, A.R. Kane’s first Rough Trade EP follows suit with a timely reminder of their prototypical, late ‘80s shoegaze and dream-pop confections that would pave the way for trip hop and music by everyone from Seefeel to LA Timpa and Dean Blunt.

‘Up Home’ was mixed at Cocteau Twins Studio and released less than a year after their M|A|R|R|S smash Pump Up The Volume, the same year as their s groundbreaking ’69’ LP, cocking a snook at Maggie Twatcher via the Balearic noise blare of ‘Baby Milk Snatcher’, beside three songs exclusive to the EP. It’s a fan-approved highlight amid their influential catalogue, historic in its short-circuiting of style and pattern that would conflate the noise-rock dirges of The VU and the sheogaze templates of The Cocteau Twins or MBV, with a below-the-belt thrust derived from jazz-funk and their parallel roots in club music, exemplified by the duo’s role, alongside Colourbox, in M/A/R/R/S, whose sampledelic anthem ‘Pump Up The Volume’ was instrumental to the UK acid house phenomenon.

On the first two songs A.R. Kane’s Alex Ayuli and Rudy Tambala make no bones about their politics and heritage, taking a shot at shitty Tory policy with the razing noise dub psychedelia of ‘Baby Milk Snatcher’, and staring down racists from a cloud of barbed but beautiful dream-pop distortion in ‘W.O.G.S.’. Their club urges come thru more clearly however in the heavy trodding momentum of ‘One Way Mirror’, anchoring their radiant noise in swooning groove next to an early pinnacle of shoegaze in the EP’s title tune, where they pluck gorgeous melody from a haze of harmonious shimmer, disembodied bombast and heart-in-mouth vox. Underrated at the time, now praised as trailblazers, A.R. Kane’s music endures on its own terms here.

Tracklist:
1.01 - A.R. Kane - Baby Milk Snatcher (6:02)
1.02 - A.R. Kane - W.O.G.S (4:18)
1.03 - A.R. Kane - One Way Mirror (4:23)
1.04 - A.R. Kane - UP (6:07)