A fair while ago I used to review unreleased bands for a website, which was fun before the mailbox just got too much. There was lots of dross, but occasionally there was something to warm the cockles, like the completely splendid, whacked out psychedelic femme-pop of Brand Violet, or Moonkat. How can you not like a band that writes a song called ‘My English Teacher Is A Mogwai Fan’?

And then there was Normal. Not The Normal of ‘Warm Leatherette’ fame, one must note; very much sans the definite article. It topped everything else in those 200+ CDs by a country mile. To quote my fevered response:

" . . . the result is an impressively cinematic journey that makes flesh of a suite of lowlife characters and chancers. None of whom you’d probably ever want to meet. The level of sonic invention is astounding. There is stuff on here I’ve never heard the like of before, and how many times can you say that? Not only that, it’s not just chucked together in some arbitrary fashion, but works as a compelling set piece."

Hyperbole? I evidently feared so at the outset of a second review, for their full-length album The Long Dark Road.

"I admit, I approached this with trepidation having, on reflection I believe justifiably, wet myself over the group’s original demo. Much of said CD is reprised here, including opener ‘Up North’, with its John Cooper Clarke meets Kraftwerk kitchen sink metric. Yep, it’s every bit as good as I remember. ‘Ton O’Bricks’, too, sounds great, suggestive of Gomez and Captain Beefheart, derivative of neither. But that’s just two of 20, or eight odd minutes of 80 on the CD. The appetite for sonic invention here is quite startling, and the vast majority of the tracks are deeply evocative even where meaning is wilfully obscured. The background, however, is distinctively urban, the mood agitated and threatening. Even ‘Angels And My Dead Wife’ takes a bedsit ballad and makes the protagonist’s ardour sound like a twisted affliction. You can’t help but wonder if the reason he’s bereaved is because his ex lies buried under the patio. Possibly in a black bin liner, the subject of the following song. There’s a real affinity for rhythm throughout, often using drum ‘n’ bass patterns alongside breakbeats and cheap sounding but effective keyboard stabs, as on ‘Message Erased’ or ‘3 Months Hanging’. Or minced Spanish guitar on the twisted-out-of-shape ‘I Asked Me Why’. All human life is here. The brief drunken retread of Wizzard’s ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ that makes up ‘They’ve Got To Learn’ is the soundtrack to a belligerent northern comic losing the plot at a Phoenix Nights charity do. ‘Old Get’ is a cold shower of urban realism. ‘That Afternoon In Hackney’ sounds like one of those crackling Malcolm McLaren voiceovers from The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. Fantastic stuff. Please make an effort to hear it."

Hey, get those earnest missionary tones at the end!

Thereafter I developed a cordial relationship with the band. Mark Rathmell, the hardest smoking man I’ve ever met, wrote the lyrics and vocalised (that covers it much better than ‘singing’). He was a very singular writer. Narratives were always fugged-up, if not from the perspective of an intoxicated man, then one struggling with a permanent hangover, observing screwed up lives eyes screwed up against the sunshine. Take ‘Old Get’, which starts out with factory floor noise, before someone starts shouting ‘wanker’ for no discernible reason whatsoever.

‘He came in with these gloves

They were making a delivery

And he tried to impress us,

With his bad language.

Saying, I can swear just like young ‘uns.

Here he goes –

Oh, oh, what a rotten fucking life

I don’t think I’ve known any other writer bother to record anything so mind-fuckingly mundane as an encounter with an arsey delivery man. Or, on the uproarious ‘Up North’ -

‘We are going to have a do, we’ll have a lock-in at the club, you can meet me brothers . . ."

Very Skully from Jim Cartright’s Road. Redolent of everything and nothing. Super real for those of us who grew up in the north.

But Mark could turn his hand to ‘surreal’ too. Take ‘Black Bin Bags’, wherein the breakdown of a marriage is reduced to a psychological warfare over custody . . . of his collection of black bin liners.

The lying, thieving bitch ain’t not getting any of these . . .

Black bin bags.

And the music was – brilliant. By turns supple and grooved, but jagged when necessary (like on the absolutely nighmarish drum and bass driven ‘The Long Dark Road’, or ‘Kaleshnikov’ - think Gang Of Four with samplers and a sense of humour). Giles Hearn and Brian Coleman were the guilty parties here. On my one meeting with Giles they teased him mercilessly over his religious beliefs. Brian was the band’s American contingent and, it turned out, rather wonderfully, was a stenographer by profession. Pints were purchased and consumed, and we even hit on the idea of having a round-table review session for recent releases. Which actually happened, but then Mark lost the tape and we all ended up in the pub again. It’s a long time ago now.

One other abiding memory; I took a CD of theirs on holiday about four years ago, which they kindly hand-picked the tunes for (though the running order looked suspiciously similar to the Sixteen Belters For Mad Bob’s DJ Sesh CD they posted a few weeks later). I was travelling with an old friend and musician. He was absolutely disgusted by what he heard. Normally mild mannered, he described the music coming out of the stereo as ‘nauseating’, ‘lowest common denominator’ and – very much my favourite this – ‘Anrdale Centre music’. I still have no idea what prompted the sheer violence of his reaction, but I literally had to pull over and change the CD before he combusted.

Naturally, I was thrilled. It’s one of those moments when you realise that only genius can move people to such extremes.

I was even more thrilled when a song called ‘Hanging Around The Arndale’ showed up on their next album, Holloway Road (I can’t quite remember if this was inspired by me relating the above tale to them. I do hope so). My favourite Holloway Road track was ‘Public Ignominy’, which is fabulous, partly because of the lyric ("I can’t discipline myself, you see, another bout of public ignominy . . . "), partly because Mark stops have way through and convulses in laughter at his attempts to pronounce . . . ignominy. Hey, that’s not an easy word to say! For further vocal gymnastics, try the rabid nosebleed techno of ‘Nag Nag Nag’. And I’m also fond of the oompah styled ‘Time Gentlmen, Please’. "Gentlemen, put your shirts back on, the women are screaming in the toilet . . ."

Sadly, I was never really able to convince anyone else of how utterly wonderful that first batch of Normal recordings was, to the extent that I began to question my own judgement. So we drifted apart. Normal became the Who Boys, who specialise in cross-genre mash-ups. I check in on them now and again (http://www.whoboys.com/) and recently downloaded one of their free albums (all the 100 or so Normal recordings are also stored at the same site for free download). It doesn’t have the magic for me that their prior incarnation had, sadly.

So, why am I dragging all this up now? Well, like I said, they’re my favourite undiscovered/unheard of group. A secret that me and my partner Dawn share (and the kids too, actually – they know all the words to ‘Up North’ which is a bit scary now I think about it). But then I mention them to Johny and – you’ve guessed it – I don’t get the expected reaction. "Oh, Normal! Fuck, I love that band!" Turns out mein host was serving behind the bar at the Foundry for one of their multi-media happenings years ago – it might even have been one of those that we attended. What a rare but fine bond we now have.

So Johny has requested a piece on Normal and here it is. I hope you like it. Do go and download some of that stuff. It’s free, but it’s priceless too. You might be thrilled, or you might combust – it’s hard to say. And don’t tell too many people. I really don’t want everyone in on this.