Having just posted that if I could live my record buying youth all over again, I would have bought more jungle and trip hop records, it’s nice it is to see the latter represented here. I appreciate that insiders will be urgently flagging me down to tell me that 11:59 were first and foremost Conscious hip hop, but that languid, loping bassline and drum pattern together with those tasteful Moog squelches, shimmering Mellotron and a shout out to Massive Attack - among many others - in the coda show where the group’s head was at, sonically, when they recorded the Ruff Life EP.
The Ticket does a wonderful job of both advertising 11:59’s skills to those who may not have previously heard of them, and promoting a sense of communal wellbeing between them and other like-minded bands and artists. If tonight were the last night of 11:59’s lives, the people mentioned in the coda are who they would want to spend that night with. The ticket could be entry to a private party, but I think it may well run a little deeper than that.
I’m currently reading The Custard Stops at Hatfield, the 1982 memoir by Peel’s former Radio 1 colleague, Kenny Everett. In the late 1960s, Peel used to say about the brilliantly creative Everett, Kenny knows. A statement which, at the time, meant everything and nothing. In 11:59’s view, those who hold the ticket also “know”, and with the confidence of youth and talent, they believe that allying with them will make them unstoppable. The confidence is infectious, contagious and irresistible.
Video courtesy of UKStandTall.
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