Music
Press
Every time a new group of punk rockers discovers slap-bass (cf. Radio 4, !!!), it becomes an excuse for writers and record clerks to cite the same tired Gang of Four/Public Image Ltd. references. Sorely overlooked is late-'70s agit-funk ensemble Medium Medium. Though the band never accomplished anything on the scale of Entertainment! or Metal Box, the caffeinated bass and sinister sax on its breakthrough 1981 single "Hungry, So Angry" sounds like the template upon which all Rapture songs are based. The rest of the oeuvre has also held up remarkably well, and the fact that so many current bands are, either knowingly or unknowingly, copping the band's sound wholesale could finally bring Medium Medium the success that eluded it 20 years ago.
-- J. Edward Keyes, Oct. 13-19, 2004
- Philadelphia Weekly
Lio Cerezo's 11/22/04 interview with Medium Medium is online:
http://www.crashinin.com/indieold22.html
- Crashin' In
This isn’t quite the sound I remember from a night at the Hammersmith Clarendon more than a year ago when, as support band, Medium Medium cast the formidable U2 in the shade with the wound-up excitement of their performance...
What it does bring you, without relief, is their power to hurt. “Hungry, So Angry” is the first track and the keynote. Shivering funk and a frantic complaining voice; bass and drums carry the momentum while guitar is cut back to scratches and whines entwined with groaning sax.
-- Phil Sutcliffe, Jan. 2, 1982
- Sounds
Everyone keeps saying they sound like the Gang of Four but they don't. They don't have the political anger or the metallic punch. Instead they have the elastic funk of Blurt, the endless groove and chant of Liquid Liquid (but sexier), a drop of the primal abandon of Malcolm Mooney-fronted Can coupled with soaring moments that touch on the beauty of the Cure. Seeing that the Liquid Liquid reissue is long out of print, and the Rapture album wasn't the dance hit follow-up it was expected to be (though it IS a well crafted pop album -- I'm not nay sayin'!) timing couldn't have been better for this reissue to arrive. Believe it or not, Medium Medium formed in 1978 recording the main body of this CD in 1981. And again, unlike Gang of Four and more like Liquid Liquid, these guys do "free-blown dubbed-up white funk" (NME quote) like no other. Sixteen tracks, including three singles, one full album, and live tracks that embody qualities touched on by dance rock bands new and old, but never quite this way, and never quite this good.
-- Scott Mou - OtherMusic.com
POST-PUNK AND NEW WAVE PIONEERS PREPARE FOR THEIR CLOSE-UP
If You Like: !!! (AKA CHIK CHIK CHIK)
Then Check Out: MEDIUM MEDIUM—HUNGRY, SO ANGRY
(Compilation, Cherry Red Records, issued in 2002)
Why It's Worth the Effort: As with almost any band from the new-wave era, Medium Medium's best singles and album cuts (1981's The Glitterhouse was their only legitimate LP) are contained on a post-mortem compilation. !!! have caught many ears by turning the energy of the Talking Heads and the attitude of a Manhattan back alley into a big, funky party; Medium Medium may not have been quite as upbeat, but their danceable fusion of pronounced bass lines, guitars straight out of a Rufus song and the occasional saxophone was catchy enough to cross over to the American disco charts, but still possessed a sense of foreboding that linked them more closely to the post-punk aesthetic.
-- Kenny Herzog
- Long Island Press
Life:Styles—compiled by Coldcut (Harmless Records) This UK production duo of Jonathan More and Matt Black Coldcut is best known for the "Seven Minutes of Madness" remix on Eric B. and Rakim's early hiphop staple "Paid in Full." Life:Styles isn't a seamless mix, but a crate-digging experience with these obsessive collectors and studio hacks...
With DFA revitalizing disco punk and labels like SoulJazz re-issuing its obvious influences with A Certain Ratio and the bands on the New York Noise comp, a cut on here will leave you speechless. Medium Medium's "So Hungry, So Angry" has slipped off the radar screen of most. With its disco drums and horns and screeching, anxiety-attacked vocals, it's obvious it was all done better the first time around.
-- Dan Martino, Aug. 4-10, 2004
- New York Press
"When my friends told me Medium Medium were going to be playing in town I thought what the heck, having never gotten to see them live the first time around. I still liked their music but how good would they sound live several decades later? This was not the type of music that would sound good, or even passable, if it was done half-heartedly.
Well, watching their set I was thoroughly convinced I got to see them in their prime anyway, and would be hard pressed to imagine them playing any better way back then as they were that solid. Everything about the band was totally together that night, from the songs to the musicianship to their attitudes. The saxophone sounded great, which reminded me of how good other punk and post punk bands that incorporated sax parts were, like X-Ray Spex and Clock DVA.
This guy was talking to me between songs wondering why he had never heard of them having any minor hits before as they were really good. I told him about their song "Hungry, So Angry" receiving some local airplay which seemed to jog his memory a little. No sooner had I stopped talking did they launch into that very song and it all came rushing back to him. It sounded superb live, throbbingly infectious and powerfully rhythm heavy.
After the show, my friends and I agreed that it was one of the better live bands any of us had seen in awhile. Judging by the reactions of the other people there that night I am sure they felt the same way."
-- Brian Sheklian is a contributor to Flipside and Maximum Rock N Roll magazines, and owner of the Grand Theft Audio record label - Brian Sheklian
"Back into the bowels of the Echoplex to find Medium Medium prancing on stage. These are the godfathers of dance punk-funk, with their sleazy saxophone solos that send shivers throughout and cause guitarist Andy Ryder to hop like a white kangaroo. Take one part bass and mix with John Rees Lewis sax skills and that alchemy creates a bitter/sweet concoction – like “Hungry So Hungry.” Punk historians, take note, this is where NYC’s the Rapture got their sound."
--L.A. CityBeat, Nov. 2008
"I went downstairs and that's when things REALLY started to get good because Medium Medium were playing. Now, a lot of post-punk fans know their song "So Hungry So Angry". I gave their record a try a long time ago and once again many years later and this band just never caught fire for me. But here they were live and I was utterly and completely amazed. Truly, I wanted to take this band home with me."
--WindyWeather blog, Nov. 2008 - Various
"A few years back, England’s Medium Medium joined the ever-longer procession of returning post-punk veterans. No longer exhausting themselves with music-press-sanctioned blood sport for the crown of relevancy, M.M. and their peers are now dutifully greeted as inventors of manifold music forms whose patents expired long ago, allowing for new tinkers and hacks. Considered minor league because they burned out quickly, dropping one album, in a revolutionary period overrun with titans, Medium Medium managed a chart hit with the bitterly anthemic “Hungry, So Angry.” While not as militantly meta as the Pop Group or Gang of Four, they pursued a comparable mutant-funk minimalism. Alan Turton’s bass pops out instantly, melodic and percussive, nearly supplanting the drum kit. Guitarist Andy Ryder sheaths his instrument in a vitreous wash of FX that whisks metallic shards, white-hot sparks and ice crystals. There was plenty of Bowie-molded affect in the singing styles of the post-punk vanguard and beyond, but John Rees Lewis might bridge the master’s mad warble and Robert Smith’s whine-to-wail volatility. And, like the Thin White Duke, Rees Lewis can blurt a sax for splats of warped color."
--Bernardo Rondeau, LA Weekly, Rock Picks for the week of December 7 - 13, 2007
- LA Weekly
Medium Medium: Hungry, So Angry [Cherry Red; 2001]
Best known for the 1981 single that is this compilation's namesake, Medium Medium cobbled together the decadent regurgitant of mainstream disco and fed it through a filter of Gang of Four's knotty funk and the Pop Group's acerbic, clawing production. Great bass lines make me weak at the knees, and Hungry, So Angry has so many: check the popping glides of the title track, the shimmy-cum-melody of "Nadsat Dream", and the scores of cinder block kicks, thumps and thuds found throughout. Most impressive, perhaps, is the stylistic and aesthetic variety-- something Medium Medium's more "important" contemporaries neither achieved nor, frankly, cared about--seen in the album's descent from hard boxy funk to glittering atmospheric jams.
--Sam Ubl, Jan. 20, 2005
- Pitchforkmedia.com
Discography
Various live performance videos available at www.mediummedium.com
SINGLES:
"Them Or Me" (7", Apt, UK, 1979)
"Hungry, So Angry"/"Nadsat Dream" (7", Cherry Red, UK, 1981)
"Hungry, So Angry" (4-track 12" EP, Cachalot, USA, 1981)
"If You Touched Her She'd Smear"/"Splendid Isolation"/"7th Floor" (2-track 7" & 3-track 12" EP, Sound Products, Holland & Intercord, Germany, 1982)
"Hungry, So Angry" b/w The Monks: "I Can Do Anything" (Punk Disco Beat, UK, 2004)
"Hungry, So Angry" (live) b/w Armando: "151" (Supersound, UK, 2007)
LPs/CDs:
"The Glitterhouse" (LP, Cherry Red, UK, 1981)
"Live in Holland" (LP/CD, Trance/LINE, Germany, 1988)
"The Glitterhouse & Plus" (LP/CD, Trance/LINE, Germany, 1988)
"Hungry, So Angry" (15-track retrospective enhanced CD, Cherry Red, UK, 2001)
COMPILATIONS:
"Them Or Me" is included on:
>"Hicks From The Sticks" (Rockburgh, UK, 1980)
Reissued as: "Future Shock" (Thunderbolt, UK, 1985)
"Hungry, So Angry" is included on:
>"Frictions: Disco Select" (Virgin France, 1981)
>"Sex, Sweat & Blood" (Beggars Banquet, UK, 1982)
>"Wave News: The New Generation of Music" (Intercord, Germany, 1982)
>"The Indie Scene 1981: The Story of British Independent Music" (Connoisseur Collection, UK, 1988)
>"Totally Wired" (Razor & Tie, USA, 1995)
>"New Wave Club Class-X 1" (Antler Subway, Belgium, 1996)
>"98 New Wave Club Class.X Traxx!!!" (Play It Again Sam, Belgium, 1996)
>"Ambitious? - A Collection of Some of Britain's Most Influential Alternative Artists" (C&S Records, UK, 1996)
>"Ambition - The Cherry Red Story, Vol. 1 & 2" (Cherry Red, UK, 1997)
>"Postpunk Chronicles: Scared To Dance" (Rhino, USA, 1999)
>"Harmless Presents Life:Styles - Compiled by Coldcut" (Harmless, UK, 2004)
>"How to Kill the DJ (Part 2)" (Kill the DJ/Tigersushi, Europe, 2004)
>"Made in Britain: The Sound of a New England 1977-1983" (free with MOJO magazine, UK 2005)
>DJ Morpheus: "I Can't Live Without My Radio" (Tigersushi, Europe, 2005)
>"Peanut Butter Wolf with Bass Your Car Streets and Party Fresh Beats" (mixtape CD, USA, 2005)
>"I'll Give You My Heart..." - Cherry Red Singles Collection 1978 - 1983 (8-CD set, Cherry Red, UK, 2008)
"Mice or Monsters" is included on:
>"Headman Presents Dance Modern" (Eskimo Recordings, Belgium, 2004)
DVDs:
"Hungry, So Angry" promo video is included on:
>"Pillows & Prayers" (Cherry Red, UK, 2003)
>"Pillows & Prayers: 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition" (Teichiku, Japan, 2003)
> "Pillows & Prayers - Cherry Red Records 1981-1984" - 3 x CD+DVD box set (Cherry Red, UK, 2008)
Photos
Bio
Post-punk/funk pioneers Medium Medium, best known for "Hungry, So Angry," the 1981 dance club hit that paved the way for the current new wave of early 1980s-influenced bands, reformed in October 2004 at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York, where they performed together for the first time in over 20 years.
Formed in Nottingham, England in 1978, Medium Medium's self-styled "extreme dance music" and "searing Zen funk" merged dance rhythms and staccato guitar with squawking sax and found sounds to create a "free-blown dubbed-up white funk" (NME) that positioned the band "at the forefront of the post punk funk movement" (Cashbox).
In February 1981, Medium Medium signed to Cherry Red and released "Hungry, So Angry," the band's second single. Dave Henderson (Sound International) wrote prophetically, "It could be one of the most important records of the type to emerge this year and will doubtlessly be revered as a classic after the group have long since departed." At the end of the year, influential music critic Robert Christgau (Village Voice) included "Hungry, So Angry" in his "Dean's List" of top singles for 1981.
"Hungry, So Angry" reached #48 on the Billboard Disco chart and "introduced scads of young bassists to the popping bass line" (Salon.com). The band's music has been included on nearly 20 compilation albums. A 15-track retrospective enhanced CD was released by Cherry Red in 2001 and two different versions of the "Hungry, So Angry" single were issued on U.K. independent labels in 2004 and 2007.
The band continues to perform occasionally. Recent shows include the first annual Part Time Punks Festival in Los Angeles in November 2008 along with A Certain Ratio and Pylon.
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