pk
drink flounce rinse repeat
The whole album is sublime.
Somewhere on this website is a huge review I did... ages ago... must have been early 2001
A.C.MARIAS: One Of Our Girls (Has Gone Missing)
Review by pk
I think music is so subjective to circumstance - who you are and where you were at a particular time, how you felt whilst melody played in the background - but the one album that never fails to haunt my very soul is an album by a girl called Angela Conway, released under the name A.C.MARIAS on Mute records.
The name of the album is called "One Of Our Girls (Has Gone Missing)"
Part of the immediate charm of this album for me is that when I first heard it, the sound was far more distant than intended, as I had only got a copy of it from a friend on an old cassette tape (this was 1989) and it was a poor recording indeed. The dynamics of the LP are such that there are sections of quiet calm reflection, which on an old analog tape just sound like a hiss.
The first thing to tell you about it is that it was produced by the people who brought you by the people who created Wire, and assisted by Barry Adamson. It also includes a cover of the track "Time Was" by Canned Heat.
The sound of this album is like nothing else you have ever heard. Think the Cocteau Twins, then add some twisted orchestration, a spy thriller, and a lost little girl and you get the picture. The instrumentation is reflective of the relatively early use of sampling, there are slightly awkward loops, and guitar stabs, that have obviously been processed by some rudimentary equipment but this all adds to the LP's brutal magic. Every single track is something special, often playful and innocent, and at other times wilful and sinister.
The lyric is of lost love, or new love, the childlike fascination of romance, simple pleasures in simple surroundings. Throughout the album there is Angela's voice, reminding the listener that there are yet secrets in love.
It is to me an early style of post-dance chill-out music similar in many ways to Portishead, but instead of hip-hop breaks scratched, there are less derivative sounds that bind the rhythm together.
In my mind I am in the ruins of a castle, or a Scottish loch, kissing a beautiful woman whilst the Earth stands still, whenever I hear the slower tracks, and on a colourful street in West London, chatting to friends in the almost hysterical throes of an acid trip whenever I hear the more upbeat tracks.
I love this album, not least because I spent eight years trying to find it - because my friend had written "Ace Maria" on the old cassette in error.
So it was treasure lost and found.
Thank you Angela Conway.
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