These subsistence level bohemians formed in 1979, an offshoot of The Fall and Nico’s one-time backing band, when she lived in Manchester in the early 80's. They were given their name by John Cooper Clarke, who saw them as ‘a hunch of haemophiliacs raised by alsatians on a council tip, the weediest gang in Salford’. Twenty-six years on, and they recorded this mini-LP at Cooper Clarke’s home-studio. It has a peculiarly stoned yet funky feel to it, with country undertones and a decidedly lazy Mancunian haze.

There are only four songs, with a remix of the first — a seven minute epic called Laid Low but each one is a thing of wayward beauty. ‘Laid Low by-a good time, fucked-up in the sunshine, dumb fuck one moonshine’ a slow motion 24-Hour Party People mantra. Martin Bramah mutters about an ‘Unreliable historian’ and the ‘mutability of the coalesced’. Strangely Lucid is a psychedelic lullaby with slide guitar and Hammond, Green Rocky Road is a cover of a Fred Neil song and the only track to pick up the pace. Necessity, another seven-minute chugger, sounds strangely like the Velvet Underground playing The Stone Roses’ Fools Gold. It’s a low-key return and a fantastically non-competitive, slowly seductive and idiosyncratic album from an under-rated band.

Ged Babey