WOMAD

Cornershop

From United Kingdom

Over the past year, Cornershop have been hailed as the most important band in Britain; the band’s driving force, Tjinder Singh, has been called a British version of Beck, and the album ‘When I Was Born For The 7th Time’ cruised into every list of the best albums of 1997. Oh, and they had a Number One single. Which is all a long way from the band’s early gigs in 1992, when one promoter described Cornershop as the worst group he’d ever booked.Formed by Singh and Ben Ayres in Preston, Cornershop signed to Wiija Records (which had been set up by former staff at Rough Trade – the label name is their postcode) and within a year had released two EPs, both rough and ready, but both filled with spirit and the beginnings of a new sonic mix. Sitar and tape loops, tunes and noise, an elementary approximation of the style that the Beastie Boys and Beck were making in America, reclaiming cultural stereotypes and reinvigorating them for a modern world.By the end of 1994, Cornershop had taken the ideals of William Morris – the Victorian proto-socialist who did a lot more than design wallpaper patterns – and taken control of all aspects of their own creativity, from cover art to studio production, becoming more proficient with sampling and sequencing technology. By this time, British Asian music was breaking out in many new directions – Talvin Singh and Nitin Sawhney brought jazz and hip-hop into the equation - so Tjinder Singh’s appropriation of guitar pop was just another strand of a major development.The second album, ‘Woman’s Gotta Have It’ (1995) attracted US fans including Sonic Youth and David Byrne, who signed the band to his Luaka Bop label. Then came 1997 - the big year - and the success at the beginning of 1998, of the remixed ‘Brimful of Asha’. Pop tunes, experimentalism, big beats and big sitars in an accessible, quirky and devastating mix. There’s nothing quite like this anywhere. Not even on a Beck album …