Amid the second division Slades of last year’s junkshop glam jamboree Velvet Tinmine, Stavely Makepeace’s “Slippery Rock Seventies”glimmered with authentic strangeness. As this 22-track anthology demonstrates, it was no one-off. The alter ego of Lieutenant Pigeon, Makepeace mixed ’70s MOR with DIY avant-gardism. Speeding up and multi-tracking home recordings in their mum’s front room, they concocted phased, clunking West Midlands exotica and spliced whole new genres: radiophonic cajun reggae, yodelling steam-punk, Joe Meek boogie. Their destiny was as a novelty footnote, but this exemplary reissue excavates a weirdly potent homebrew 10cc.
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