Compact Disc Connection

Pat Fish, better known as British thinking-person's popster The Jazz Butcher, is on a personal mission to bring literacy back to pop music.

Over an uneasy nine-year, seven-album alliance with a sales-driven music industry, Fish has never taken the easy way out with a lyric. Condition Blue was inspired by a nervous breakdown Fish experienced towards the end of 1990. The album's barefaced and literal songs express Fish's observations as he worked to claw his way back to sanity.

She's A Yo Yo and Shirley Maclaine erupt in frenzied bursts of driving guitar and feedback. Other numbers like Racheland and Still & All have a slow, glacial, beautiful, gothic sound. The highlight in this department is Harlan, Fish's gorgeous tribute to science fiction writer Harlan Elison. Over it all, The Jazz Butcher intones deep, resonant melodies, seemingly in calm control but always bordering the precipice that gapes just below the surface.

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