‘Mancunian spoken word’ is, by now, a genre unto itself – the world view espoused by those from England’s north west one of bipolarity: that is, the acknowledgement that life can sometimes be a tragedy but that it’s best to laugh and think our way through it. It goes beyond mere gallows humour. It’s a way of saying that which is true. It’s a method by which we can survive a cruel world. And when you hear those flat vowels issued from between gritted teeth, it makes you stop and listen. It arrests you. Just listen to John Cooper Clarke and the sentiments of a spoken word poem like ‘The Hanging Gardens of Basildon’, or even ‘Evidently Chickentown’.

But now comes an interesting fusion from Mancunian spoken word artist Equinox and electro-sleaze disco peddlers Feral Five. The track is ‘Kiss’ and it sits happily on Equinox’s current LP It’s Hard To Be Happy When Your Head Is Full Of Sin.

In short, it works a treat, the sound big enough to fill a ballroom and get your feet and mind in locomotion. With tinges of JCC, Ian Brown and Aziz Ibrahim painted over a solid workout straight out of Vince Clarke’s toolbox (for those who want a catch-all description), it’s a track that ought to lead you to the album in its entirety.

Capacious with further collaborations from Ashley Reaks, Snippet, Radio Europa, Dementio13, Ceiling Demons and yes, Vince Clarke on ‘Goodnight Vienna’, you the listener will be thrown into a deep end of a type of poetry you probably thought you could best do without. But listen on and perhaps, just perhaps, re-engage with your own buried literacy that is, whether you like it or not, under daily attack from the dumbed-down media by which you attempt to engage with the world at large.

It’s Hard To Be Happy When Your Head Is Full Of Sin, the new album from Equinox, is out now.

Jason Holmes
@JasonAHolmes