Officer!

This new 7″, available in a limited edition of 300, represents the first outing on vinyl for one of the most idiosyncratic and affecting songs in the Officer! catalogue: ‘Life At The Water’s Edge’. In fact, we’d go far as to call this piece of ambiguous, ecstatic, anguished art-rock one of the finest songs of its era, or of any era for that matter. Cult London musician Mick Hobbs came of age in the late ’70s RIO scene, playing in The Work, The Lowest Note and related groups, and becoming closely associated with This Heat and their Cold Storage studio, where he worked with the likes of Flaming Tunes and Catherine Jauniaux. Officer!, a vehicle for his own songwriting, surfaced in 1982 and was active throughout that decade; then a long pause, during which Hobbs joined Half Japanese (he remains a member to this day). In '95 he recorded a glut of new Officer! material which only saw the light of day 2014, in the shape of a double-album, Dead Unique, released by Blackest Ever Black.

Previously only available on the 1983 cassette release 8 New Songs By Mick Hobbs, and backed here by the gloriously surreal 'Dogface', ‘Life At The Water’s Edge’ was captured on 8-track at Cold Storage in Brixton, with Hobbs on vocals and bass, accompanied by Rick Wilson (drums), Terri Robson (violin), Anna Piva (vocals), Richard Wolfson (keyboards) and Family Fodder’s Alig (guitar). Lyrically, it has the whiff of a blackly comic fairytale, but at bottom appears to be a brutally frank account of childhood hardship and suffering. Hobbs’ vocal delivery is rueful, with flashes of barely contained rage, but the music ultimately suggests healing and rebirth, Robsons’s strings in particular offering an escape into the pastoral sublime. One thing is for sure: once heard, this startlingly vivid, intricately patterned pop song can not be forgotten. Both tracks were remastered and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy in January '14. The 7" comes housed in picture sleeve with printed lyric sheet insert.