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Back in the late-90s these Abingdon based doomsters released the sublime ‘We’re Wolves’ on Shifty Disco before producing an intermittent stream of excellent demos but never really making the promised leap onto a higher level. Still, time doesn’t seem to have withered their talents, nor improved their collective mood much judging from this threesong CD. Frontman Adam Clayton is possessed of one of those wonderfully epic voices that could break a heart at fifty paces and ‘Perfect Servant’ finds him riding on a playfully grandiose mix of trombone, guitar and piano that sounds like My Life Story might have done had they lost their sense of irony, succumbed to their inner goth and written a few better tunes. ‘Stop The Birds’, meanwhile, finds Adam in full Nick Cave growl mode, horns adding a little pomp to a billowing piano and organ-led lament. ‘Question Time’ feels positively jolly by comparison as the trombone parps and Adam croons like a lounge lothario about brushing his teeth, but soon he’s “falling apart at the seams” and the whole thing sweeps with ragged majesty to its finale. Good to have them back, with summer approaching, we need all the rampant misery we can get. - Nightshift
Discography
We'rewolves/Demons, released by Shifty Disco, March 2000.
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Bio
Vigilance Black Special are an Oxford/Manchester outfit, the core of which comprises two sets of brothers; Adam and Felix Clayton (vocals/guitars and keyboards-Oxford), and Richard and Chris O'Hanlon (bass/drums-Manchester). The full band line-up is completed by Fionnguala Sherry-Brennan (keys) and Paul Emerson (trombone), both also Mancunian. Having begun playing music together in the late 90's, the band began recording and playing live in Oxford in 2000, and were quickly snapped-up by local label Shifty Disco to put out a single- 'We'rewolves'/'Don't Chase Your Demons', which earned them a 4/5 rating in Melody Maker. Based around the Clayton brothers song-writing partnership and described, though not by the band themselves, as sounding somewhere between The Bad Seeds, Motown, Radar Brothers and The Bunnymen, they cemented their reputation locally with a series of intense live performances and demo recordings, and became favourites of the Oxford music press whilst also regularly gigging in London and the North West. Due to the geographically centre-less nature of the band line-up- they live in Stevenage, Bath, Manchester, Coventry and Oxford respectively- they go through regular periods of inactivity on the live circuit, but continue to write, play, and record new songs. The latest of these were recorded in November 2008 at Dungeon Studios with Richard Haines- an engineering wizard with whom the band have enjoyed a long-standing relationship- and can be heard here and on their Myspace site prior to their inclusion in a forthcoming album.
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