The new (July-August) edition of the Spanish music magazine Rock De Lux features a rave review of Factory Star's Enter Castle Perilous album by highly-respected journalist Kiko Amat. The original review, in Spanish, is shown above with a rough English translation below.
FACTORY STAR
"Enter Castle Perilous"
OCCULTATION
VINTAGE POST-PUNK. Occultation is a kamikaze label whose mission in life is to put out all those records that only seem to matter to an incredibly select minority. They’re currently home to The Wild Swans - perhaps the most elegant, legendary (and underground) of all 1980s Liverpool groups but, not content with that, the label has now released the first LP by Factory Star, the new group led by Martin Bramah. You all know who he is and what he does in his spare time: as a founder member of The Fall, together with Una Baines and Mark E. Smith, he was responsible for the way that group sounded, then later went on to lead the astounding Blue Orchids (whose two singles and LP for Rough Trade are essential).
So then, Factory Star sound exactly as you’d hope a group led by someone with that kind of credentials would sound. Sometimes they produce the archetypal Bramah sound, i.e. jinxed, oppressive sixties garage of the "Green Fuzz" or "Born Loser" variety with a post-punk psychopathic Fall feel (listen to "Angel Steps", for instance). At other times things get even darker and end up not a million miles away from the homicidal desolation of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds ("Big Mill" or "Cheetham Bill) and at others they go back to the Albion of The Kinks (dogged by bad luck and an air of the Dole queue, as on "Away Dull Care" or "The Fall Of Great Britain). As if this were not enough, Bramah rounds the record out with some pieces which are almost recited and reminiscent of that working men’s club vaudeville which was such a big influence on the likes of Ian Dury and John Cooper Clarke ("Black Comic Book" or "When Sleep Won't Come"). It hardly needs saying that he does this with far more style than all of those other groups who have been imitating The Fall since the day he invented them. Oh, and on top of everything they recorded the whole album in just three days. Buy it.
KIKO AMAT
