Miniatures 2020 - Out Today

Thrilled to have contributed 1 of the 124 minutes in this 40th Anniversary tribute to Morgan Fisher’s first collection of tiny masterpieces.

The sleevenotes for Morgan Fisher's 1980 compilation Miniatures describe how "no attempt was made to find a perfect running, order". This is partly because the possible permutations of 51 tracks equal a figure 63 digits in length. In spite of its random sequencing (or because of it) little pockets of weirdness gather together - slapstick brass from Trevor Wishart tumbles into John White's angular chimes, Pete Challis and Phil Diplock's concrete "My Way" idles toward Robert Wyatt's looped and layered vocals on "Rangers In The Night".

Miniatures 2020 - compiled by Barry Lamb to celebrate the 40 year anniversary of Fisher's original - seems, initially, more planned in its sequencing. Opening with Bendle & Dean Brodrick's "I Am Sitting In A Womb" and closing with "Mass Extinction Event" by The Miniatures Family, the narrative appears to moves from fleshy creation to fiery destruction. The mad bundle in the middle, however, is less coherently ordered and closer to the thrilling but bonkers bric-a-brac of its predecessors.

Spenser Tomson, The Wire