Mekons: Exquisite (Vinyl)

Hunkered down and unable to record together, in 2020 the Mekons created a glorious digital chain letter of an album. Exquisite is a sprawling manifesto of connection and defiance that deftly slides through fiddle tunes, digi-dub, fireside ballads and urgent rock & roll. And that’s just side A.

The original recording plan was to have been the whole-band-in-a-room session in Valencia, Spain. When the pandemic rendered that impossible the process took a sharp swerve. The album credits describe it this way: "Exquisite was recorded in lockdown on mobile phones, broken cassette recorders, clay tablets & other ancient technologies in Aptos, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York & Devon. "

This legendary group from Leeds, have written contemporary music history for the last 40 years as radical innovators of both first generation punk and insurgent roots music, and Exquisite is another powerful vector of that legacy.