Courage [Maxi-single]

Description

Courage is a three-track, 45RPM 12-inch vinyl single by the British alternative pop band Talking Drums, released on Sticky Music in 1982 (catalogue number GUM 005). (Remastered by George Horn and re-issued on vinyl by Dark Entries in 2018 featuring one bonus track, “Lost In The 20th Century”.) The EP was engineered by Ian McCredie at Black Gold Studios in Glasgow, Scotland; with Steve Butler producing. All tracks written by band members Dot and Charlie Irvine.

Talking Drums are Carol Moore on lead vocals and percussion, Dot Irvine on keyboards, backing vocals, and maracas, Charlie Irvine on lead guitar and backing vocals, Stewart McEwan on bass, and Derek Clark on drums. As well featuring “our old pal Malcolm ‘Hyper’ Duffin on congas.”

Rediscovered on Jazzanova’s “Computer Incarnations For World Peace” compilation in 2007, Talking Drums’ «Courage» is an amazing almost 8-minutes piece of dubby disco-punk-funk in the ESG/Talking Heads/Rip Rig n Panic/Pop Group/Slits vein, but where its contemporaries were often on a quite dry experimental percussion-driven dogma, this one’s way lusher and more sweetly, joyfully melodic, through the use of synths, FX and echoes galore, enwrapping a very catchy tune, which makes it still more dancefloor friendly and ahead of its time than most of its contemporaries some 25 years later. A must-have then (if you can find it), which found echoes in the years 2000′s through artists like LCD Soundsystem, Headman, the whole DFA and Gomma catalogues and more generally all the ‘tropical’ poppy revival.

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> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/courage-ep/1435214382)

12-inch Vinyl Single tracklist:

Side A:
A1. “Courage”

Side B:
B1. “Parasuicide”
B2. “Descartes Lives”
2018 Bonus Track:
B3. “Lost In The 20th Century”

Note: Available at Bandcamp: https://talking-drums.bandcamp.com/album/courage

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