In our continuing series of releases documenting the best of avant Scottish pop of the early '80s, Domino is privileged to be releasing Entomology, a comprehensive anthology of Josef K, the Edinburgh quartet whose legend has far outlived grown well beyond the band's own brief lifespan.
Excerpted from the liner notes for Entomology, penned by the inimitable Paul Morley:
There needed to be a gloomy remotely intimate glam pop group named after a character created by Franz Kafka who detuned their pained, pining guitars like the Velvet Underground, who screwed up dance beats with as much nimble knowingness and/or amateurish exuberance as Devo, who faced up to long lasting reality with as much sad, mad grace as Magazine, who got stuck into logic as defiantly as Pere Ubu, who had spent a lot of time watching Television and listening to the first six or seven songs written by Buzzcocks.
They took themselves very seriously whilst circling the idea that fun was a very peculiar notion.
They were The Sound of Young Scotland, together with Orange Juice, whose guitars were also radiant and brittle, whose rhythms were also scrubbed and blunt, whose vocals were also proud and serious, but who sounded like another group completely.
A touch more rational. A little less glaring. A splinter less uptight. Lacking, perhaps, the art for art’s sake element that some of us swooned over, and which we see explicitly echoed in they way, say, the popular Franz Ferdinand express themselves.
Their own men.
In their own special time.
Who would know when it was time to quit.
Sorry For Laughing (Postcard 7" single version) (mp3)
Probably the band's best-known compositions, it's definitely the most-covered, most recently by Nouvelle Vague.
It's Kinda Funny (Postcard 7" single version) (mp3)
Released in the autumn of 1980, "It's Kinda Funny" was their third single and a haunting tribute to Ian Curtis of Joy Division, who had passed away the previous spring.
Also download Chance Meeting on Epitonic.
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