Inca Babies 1983-87: Plutonium CD - Import

For the first time on CD, Cherry Red rounds up the best of the Inca Babies, sonic terrorists much beloved of John Peel, for whom they would record four sessions between 1984 and 1986, alerted by their debut single, `The Interior '. Formed in Hulme, Manchester in 1982, the Inca Babies eschewed the alternative music scene's preoccupation with fey, jangly guitar pop, in favour of a raunchy, high-octane rock `n' roll hybrid which saw them christened the `Hulme Cramps', with influences including the Birthday Party, Link Wray and the Gun Club. They played prodigiously in the UK, and soon found popularity abroad, taking their rowdy, heart-stopping show to Scandinavia and mainland Europe, where they remain cult favourites. Tracks from all four of their Top 20 Indie chart hits are included, as well as highlights from their albums (including the Indie Top 3 hit Rumble).

Inca Babies grimy, the Cramps-meet-the Birthday Party roar was one of the most distinctive sounds on the mid-'80s Manchester scene, and one of the most brutalizing. From the moment their debut single "The Interior" appeared in 1983, until a radically different lineup bowed out with the Black Lagoon album in 1987, the Babies maintained a barrage of noise that was as uncompromising as it was exhilarating. 1983-87: Plutonium is the band's first career-spanning retrospective, and a jolly good job it does. Although a double-CD would certainly have been preferable, still 15 tracks slip effortlessly across seven singles and three albums, not only picking up on the band's best vinyl performances, but also grabbing a couple of songs from their John Peel sessions; the closest that your living room will ever come to an Inca Babies concert, and twice as delirious because of that. Compiled in strictly unchronological order, but with a keen eye for the band's development regardless, Plutonium probably won't make many fresh converts for the band -- their music, while compulsive, was very much a time-and-a-place experience. But, for anybody who caught them (or wished they had) at the time, the diseased stranger's waltz goes on forever. ~ Dave Thompson