There’s delays and there’s delays. And we’re talking delays here. Serious ones. ‘From The Roots To The Shoots’ has been a long time coming for Mr Sedgley. Christ, even Fatboy Slim saw the potential of the now almost iconic ‘Happy’ as far back as 2004 and it was written as long back as 2001 in an era before all that terrorism, Iraq and Weapons of Mass Fabrication jiggery-pokery of our beleagured imaginations took hold. Let’s face it; it was a different world entirely. But who could have known, eh? Just as you were cueing up that moist, slinky intro and clicking your fingers to the dry rollback of the beats, someone went and flew a plane into the first tower. And just as your head started nodding, and your shoulders started bobbing, someone flew a plane into the second. And by the time the delirious, swirling funk of the bass kicked in, the whole thing had collapsed. So ‘From The Roots To The Shoots’ represents the old and the new in no lame way, harking back to a period before the whole world collapsed, back to the old school, back to the old score then dragging the whole kicking and screaming through a wormhole and into the contemporary. It’s the climax of five-years spent trawling the archives of disco, funkadelia, acid-house and electro and its arrived just as Summer 2006 gets out of neutral.
Fancy a blast of hip-popping eighties synth-pop? Then ‘I’ve Been Waiting’ should fill your boots just fine – rocksteady beats, bright, fluorescent vocals and as many squidey key strokes as you could squeeze in a sock. Electroclash? Check out ‘Celebrity’- like electroclash, only with more bump and grind.
It’s a confusing collection, perhaps, a tad anachronistic, but one you should persevere with.