a witness - reviews

Gaz Eta (February 2007) Double review of I Am John's Pancreas and Yukon by label-mates Pure Sound

Spill (June 2006) "...collection of rough-edged nuggets..."

Uncut (May 2006) "...file between Hex Induction Hour and Ice Cream For Crow..."

Soundsxp.com (May 2006) "...a thrashy attack of angular guitars and stream of consciousness vocals..."

Rocksound (May 2006) "...nasal of vocal, jagged of sound and fiercely uncompromising..."

Subba-cultcha.com (May 2006) "...joyfully moody and angular, experimental and weird, trivial and complex."

Drowned In Sound webzine (May 2006) "...What's most wonderful, though, is the abundance of musical revelation here ..."

Mojo (April 2006) "...this lot were the kind of mid-80s "Peel Band" whose brutalist, drum machine powered austerity earned the Radio 1 jock accusations of wilful obscureness..."

Yahoo (February 2003) "...Rick Aitken on guitar was phenomenal - you will never hear riffs like it anywhere else..."

Uncut (issue 75) "...even listening to A Witness today one still expects Peel's voice to crop up as each track fades..."

Sunday Times (August 2000) "...another great British band of the 1980s lost between the death of punk and the rise of Britpop..."

Manchester Evening News (August 2000) "...This compilation recalls their Stranglers-ish basslines, tight, edgy tunes and a kind of experimental rawness..."

kisschase blog (November 2005) "...the Arctic Monkeys can't start to compete with the genuinely funny, satirical narrative[s]..."

Yahoo
Threaphurst Lane, 2 February 2003
Reviewer: paul38063 from UK
Most of you would not have heard of this band, and it would be unfair to put them in any category because they were totally unique. The nearest description would be indie with punk influences,and the use of just about every musical instrument known to man and alarm clocks and domestic noise.

Rick Aitken on guitar was phenomenal - you will never hear riffs like it anywhere else. This album is a compilation of the two albums they produced - Sacred Cow Heart and I Am John's Pancreas - plus tracks from at least two twelve-inch singles. It does feature most of their best tracks from the superb "Smelt Like A Pedestrian" to "The Loudhailer Song", "Nodding Dog Moustache", "Sharpened Sticks", "Red Snake" etc which were equally as good.

It also includes the track often commented on by people who know nothing about this band titled "I Love you Mr Disposable Razors" which some say is their finest. Real fans disagree: in fact this is a tremendous album that just grows and grows on you the more it's played.

The hallmark of a great album is never getting bored with it and making new discoveries in the tracks each time you play them. This is true of this album. The only shame is that possibly four of A Witness's finest tracks were left off. "Regular Round", "Camera", "Kitchen Sink Drama" and the mighty sounding "Raw Patch" are missing from this and may never come out on compact disc which is a crime as they are their finest tracks. They were possibly edged out due to time restrictions.

From a fan's point of view A Witness only did about three naff tracks - "Tomorrow Never Knows", "4.49 Stool" and "Break On Through" should have been omitted and replaced with the above.

If it had not been for the discovery of the original recordings in Alan Brown's attic and the sheer persistence of Vince Hunt to get this final testament out not only for the fans but as a tribute to Rick, the world would have been robbed of a truly great album. And let's hope that by a miracle in future all of "Sacred Cow Heart" (which was a Peel session version of these songs) and the other tracks I mentioned come out on CD for all our musical pleasure....If you like guitars punk-ish to indie music check it out. You won't be disappointed.
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UNCUT (issue 75)
A Witness: Threaphurst Lane
They were so integral to weekday evenings in 1986 sandwiched between Bogshed and Stump on night-time Radio 1 that even listening to A Witness today one still expects Peel's voice to crop up as each track fades.

Nostalgia aside, this is a splendid memory-jogger of the near-classic I Am John's Pancreas and a repertoire which, with titles like "Nodding Dog Moustache" drew inevitable stylistic and ideological comparisons with The Fall. Never fully realising their potential beyond a much-loved Eighties cult (tragically guitarist Rick Aitken died in an accident in 1989) this is an epitaph of which to be proud.
Simon Goddard
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Sunday Times Culture section
August 20, 2000
Threaphurst Lane is an illuminating overview of Manchester's A Witness, another great British band of the 1980s lost between the death of punk and the rise of Britpop. Most of the earlkier tracks are a thinner take on The Fall's sneery rockabilly rumble and satirical-visionary lyrics, but their final single, "I Love You Mr Disposable Razors", mixes nasty swaggering guitar with one of the most uplifting pop choruses ever, while its B-side, a cover of The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows", manages to encompass swirling psychedelia and concrete grey dourness simultaneously.

Then guitarist Rick Aitken died in a climbing accident and everything was over. The previously unreleased title track, a tremulous piano instrumental, could be a lament for A Witness's unfulfilled potential.
Stewart Lee
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Manchester Evening News
August 11, 2000

No, not the bubbling-under Wigan band Witness but post-punk nearly-made-it local heroes A Witness, whose career was cut short by the death of guitarist Rick Aitken in 1989 in a climbing accident. This complication recalls their Stranglers-ish basslines, tight, edgy tunes and a kind of experimental rawness which recommended them as darlings of the John Peel session. A very worthy revival.
Paul Taylor
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kisschase blog
Various Artists Commercially Unfriendly (Gott Discs)
There are lots of arguments why 1986 was the best year in the history of the world ever, one to which only 1976, the long hot and violent summer which heralded the emergence of punk, could possibly dream of comparing.

But. Looking back, perhaps the best thing of all were the "other" bands off the real C86. The ones that weren't the Primals or the Weddoes or the Pastels or even the wonderful Wolfhounds. The ones we didn't love because they didn't have the same mopey dewy-eyed indie pop perfection, but the ones that I'm beginning to treasure more and more as we approach the twentieth anniversary of, well, me being 13.

And, as we bask in the revisionism surrounding the first anniversary of John Peel's death, typified by some shockingly dreary and straightforward sub-Britpop tracks on the alleged tribute compilation (as if Peel listened only to Pulp and Blur and never listened to techno, hip-hop, dub, d&b, happy hardcore, grindcore, death metal, world music etc...), it's worth saying that those "other" bands (Bogshed. MacKenzies. A Witness. Big Flame. The Shrubs. You KNOW) were real Peel bands, and that "Commercially Unfriendly" to me is not only a tribute to Peel, but probably the best yet.

Track three. A Witness. It strikes me that this is the fourth posting in a row in which I've mentioned A Witness. But they are a band to truly merit such "acclaim". "I Love You, Mr Disposable Razors" is godlike, obviously, a work of skewed pop genius, full of hooks and glorious observation ("anaglypta on the staircase...") even before the bouncy, sarky middle eight that takes it effortlessly into all-time classic territory as Keith Curtis murmurs "no flat caps here... no miserable Yorkshiremen... I love you, Mr disposable income"; an ode to that smug, usurping Thatcherite dolt, 80s Gillette-man/ car-advert man, still managing with doe-eyed poppiness to wander into Fall territory. It's so galling to have someone like Alex Turner being feted as a lyrical talent (admittedly only by the NME as opposed to more seasoned commentators like pub drunks) when the Arctic Monkeys can't start to compete with the genuinely funny, satirical narrative of a song like this, tied to such taut, rippling, guitar inter-rhythms.  

Read the full review at kisschase.blogspot.com

Drowned in Sound webzine
I Am John's Pancreas, reviewed by Thomas Blatchford, May 2006. Rating 8/10.

On the back of the booklet sat in front of me there lies just one photograph. Although it pictures a seemingly unremarkable fragment of the English countryside, swamped in vibrant sh ade s of green like any other cluster of your local forest, its solemnity lies in its sense of human absence. Underneath it reads thus: "Trees planted for Rick Aitken at Sunny Corner, Etherow Country Park , Stockport Feb '90: now flourishing woodland". And to be honest, it would be wonderful to sit here and say, truthfully, that the legend bore above it had flourished in a similar manner. For the legend above it reads, to your correspondent's delight, I Am John's Pancreas.

You see, for all the Wedding Presents, Primal Screams or even Half Man Half Biscuits that still romp through the British music scene with varying degrees of success, there's a host of bands from the C86 scene that ended up leading much shorter, obscurer and less celebrated careers. Granted, the mortal departure of aforementioned guitarist Aitken after a fatal climbing accident in the Scottish Highlands put paid to a chance of blossoming longevity, but A Witness are one such band who were swept all too cruelly aside by the fickle finger of fad. Personally it was hard to gauge the excitement that the band's debut album caused in 1986 - it was hard for me to pick up everything John Peel said as the amniotic fluid was muffling the sound too much - but as these ten tracks show, it's a shame to think that their name isn't mentioned alongside your usual Joy Division, Smiths, Sonic Youth reference lists. Which is why the reissue of this album (apparently delayed because half of the album's master tapes went missing, only to be found twelve years later in the former drummer's attic) is such a welcome one.

For a start, it's not as if the album sounds as dated as most other guitar music from twenty years ago does today. Maybe it's the digital re-mastering, or maybe it's that a lot of the songs seem appropriately dripping in bile. "I felt restless and a trifle bored ," singer Keith Curtis growls on opener "Smelt Like A Pedestrian" which, despite sounding like the most foppish punk statement to ever open an album, does well to pre-empt the abrasive guitars and the jittering of something called a Drumatix TR 606. Indeed, the whole LP appears to team with unstoppable energy, partly because their lack of an actual drummer gives the scope for rapid machine convulsions, but more because there seems to be a desire to look beyond the template of jangling indie music - rumbling basslines, shattered piano chords, post-punk saxophone, eloquent wailing and spat vitriol, they all appear.

What's most wonderful, though, is the abundance of musical revelation here. Some of those moments. Like when a harmonica-type instrument starts up three minutes into the pulsating treble of "Red Snake". Or the breathless, angry hopelessness of the words sung in "The Loudhailer Song" (sample: 'Things to remember: There is no God, Liberation will never come, We are all doomed to a life of servitude.'). Or, as Hunt points out in the sleeve notes, the keyboard at the end of "Dipping Bird", a song that sounds like it was actually recorded at the wrong speed - that must've confused Mr Peel. However "4.49 Stool" is another one of those moments but seems to throw the album off course, despite being an exemplary British take on the ideas of musique concrete that pre-empts Hunt's work in Pure Sound. It seems too out of place, and does little to help the rest of the album's cohesiveness.

It's evident though, as the band end the album vigorously with a bizarre chant of 'pasta on your arm and fetch a trumpet', that this forty minutes which by rights shouldn't have faded into the back of the indie world's consciousness at the passing of 1986. Even though it's got two decades to show for itself, how music this fiery can lay dormant for any length of time is beyond me.
Read the review in full
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Subba-Cultcha.com
I Am John's Pancreas, reviewed by Matt Turner, May 2006

Having carved a distinctive and original path through the 1980s indie scene in Manchester, A Witness' seminal record has now been re-issued and re-mastered, and as such, must join the wanted list for any fan from their first time around. Falling somewhere between the death of punk in the mid 80s and the rise of Britpop, I Am John's Pancreas is joyfully moody and angular, experimental and weird, trivial and complex. Admittedly, this might sound paradoxical, and at times, the album does leap from the profound to the explorative, yet this wilful experimental and challenging style is exactly that which excited John Peel so much, and explains the album's great appeal. Always pushing the boundaries of its listeners expectations, I Am John's Pancreas is a wonderful reminder of what A Witness could have become.
Read the review in full at subba-cultcha.com
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Soundsxp.com
I Am John's Pancreas, reviewed by Ged M, May 2006

We usually describe a record as 'C86' when it's full hyperactive guitars, trebly squeaks and buzzy pop. A Witness's "Sharpened Sticks" on the NME C86 cassette represented a different sound, but no less of an antidote to the pop inanity that was prevalent in the mid-80s: a thrashy attack of angular guitars and stream of consciousness vocals, driven along by a grumbly bass and TR606 drum machine, that owed a debt to the Fall, the Nightingales and Captain Beefheart. It was pretty leftfield for the time but those aggressively driving post-punk rhythms have become almost mainstream in indie circles 20 years later.

I Am John's Pancreas, A Witness's first record, has been released on CD for the first time after the master tapes were rediscovered in the drummer's attic. Although nothing on here matches the brilliance of the sicko thrash-pop of "I Love You Mr Disposable Razors" from 1989, it shows that the elements were in place three years earlier: from the buzzing, bass-y "Smelt Like A Pedestrian" to Soft Boys-meet-Beefheart skronky jazz-pop of "Car Skidding" to sampled, experimental "4.49 Stool" to Swans-like doom of "The Loudhailer Song" ("things to remember/ there is no God/ liberation will never come/ we are all doomed to a life of servitude"), without losing contact with a little melody.

A Witness broke up after guitarist Rick Aitken, for whom this record is a bit of a tribute, died in a climbing accident in 1989. But they've left something to be proud of: not just a piece of the C86 legend but a record that stands up more than you'd have thought among the young post-punkers of today.
Read the review in full at soundsxp.com
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