Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong (Expanded Edition)

Mark and Clive Ives began recording music at home in South London during the 1970s, unconcerned with presenting it to other people. Mainly instrumental and incorporating both acoustic and electronic instruments -- from guitar, clarinet, and singing bowls to early drum machines -- their songs are both pastoral and intimate, exuding a unique, homespun charm. The music is cozy, whimsical, mellow, sometimes sentimental, and mildly trippy, and its impossible to properly attach a genre to it. Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong, the duos first album under the band name Woo, was independently released in 1982, drawing from their cache of home recordings. It has been periodically reissued over the years, as the pairs catalog has grown, finding its way to multiple generations of curious music lovers. Opener "Swingtime" sets the pace with a gently ambling rhythm, bringing to mind a rootsier version of mid-70s Cluster, then segueing into a faster tempo and more metallic, clanging tones on the second track, which concludes with a flurry of guitar shredding. Other tunes like "The Cleaner" and the title track bring to mind the meditative guitars of the Durutti Columns Vini Reilly, but seem looser and more fluid. "The Attic," the albums only vocal selection, is an ethereal folk-rock gem filled with charm and wonder. "Wapping" starts out as a gentle, minimal trickle before the pulsating electronics are gradually joined by gently tugging guitar fuzz and an almost dubby rhythm. "The English Style of Rowing" has a strangely old-timey feel, but its softly puttering drum machine displaces it from any specific era. Hardly new age or chamber jazz, and too early to be recognized as post-rock, Woo invented their own style of music, and their debut still sounds like nothing else. ~ Paul Simpson