The Real Tuesday Weld
Till Tuesday: A band named after a cult actress, using samples of 1930s big-band sounds and pre-war chansons, and layering them over lazy house beats and nouveau jazz rhythms - what would the real Tuesday Weld think? Actually, Weld is reportedly quite a fan of this eccentric outfit, the alter-ego of one Stephen Coates esq, of Clerkenwell, London. Coates, an ex-art student, conceived the idea for The Real Tuesday Weld after meeting the actress in a dream, accompanied by legendary Greek bandleader Al Bowlly. Coates created a new style of music which he calls antique beat. Imagine Fatboy Slim with a straw boater and side parting, spinning old gramophone records at the local music hall while the first air-raid sirens sound. The Real Tuesday Weld, as the Brian Wilson song goes, weren't made for these times, but they do provide a refreshing glimpse of the past via a library of scratchy samples, reminiscent of those old 78s your granddad used to play on an old wind-up player in the next room.
Brassed off: Stephen Coates grew up with a love of swing, jazz and syrupy cinema tunes. His granddad was in a dance band back in the swing era, and young Stephen soaked up his old jazz records. Stephen lists his ideal song as Cole Porter's Night and Day, disdains modern rock music in all its forms, and particularly loathes those new-fangled guitar solos, although he does allow up-to-date electronica to seep into his sound. As The Real Tuesday Weld, Coates released his debut, The Valentine EP, a romantic, retro calling card whose neo-classical charm got critics to prick up their ears and listen. They had to listen carefully, though, because in parts it sounded like it was coming out of a crackly old wireless set deep inside an air-raid shelter.
Forever blowing bubbles: While sharing a flat with writer and fellow intellectual Glen Duncan, Coates began working on his first album, I, Lucifer, conceived as a soundtrack to Duncan's novel of the same name. To help him realise his vintage vision, Coates conjured up his other alter-ego, a 1940s dandy known only as the Clerkenwell Kid, and recruited falsetto-voiced Martyn Jacques of nu-vaudevillians The Tiger Lilies, Scots chanteuse Pinkie McClure, French crooner David Guez and Dutch trumpeter Jacques Van Rhijn. A single, Bathtime in Clerken- well, had clubbers up and down the land cheerfully doing the Charleston. The song's video, made by Russian animator Alex Budovskiy, was nominated for an award at the Sundance film festival.
Making your mind up: The Clerkenwell Kid is back with a new single, (Still) Terminally Ambivalent Over You, and featuring more of those flapper-era samples and roaring twenties tunefulness.
Kevin Courtney
