Listen up! It's The Correspondents

Wandsworth's The Correspondents make me want to dance! And nothing makes me want to dance...well, except for maybe The Jackson 5 and I Want You Back!

The tunes on their MySpace page are seriously kick ass and they sound like they'd be great fun live...if I could find out where they're playing! There also doesn't seem to be a way to actually own any of their music yet...either in 'get your sticky mitts on it' or download form, but as soon as there is, I'm there!

Describing themselves as "1930s Hip Hop", throwing in some swing and big band sounds, as well as some nifty turntablism, this is proper catchy stuff. In places it reminds me a lot of Chumbawamba (back when they were good) or The Avalanches...with some foot-shuffling, scuffling ska thrown in. And you just have to hear their version of The Jungle Book's I Wanna Be Like You!

They are DJ Chuckles (aka Tim Cole) and Ian Bruce, the former being the DJ/producer and the latter MC/singer/general trouble maker and they site such diverse influences as Ella Fitzgerald, Fatboy Slim and Donovan.

Their story, as told on their MySpace blog:

"The Correspondents formed in a small coffee shop in the French Riviera while waiting for the bar to open. They both set eyes upon the same unfinished glass of 1987 Bordeaux, and after an extremely gentlemanly yet dubiously romantic cuffuffle, managed to spill it down Ian's hand tailored tweed waistcoat. A crime Chuckles is still paying for today.

The Correspondents found that large quantities of port, Swing and Hip Hop go surprising well together.

The Correspondents found that while decks will skip, sound systems will cut out and microphones will feedback... Ian's two tone spats will without fail maintain the contrast of the ying-yang.

The Correspondents spent an illustrious couple of years peddling imitation moonshine in a Glaswegian suburb.

The Correspondents thought about becoming a Phil Collins tribute act... But then thought that time is better spent doing just about anything else.

The Correspondents have heard a rumour that Ian hangs his tie collection on a rhinoceros horn he acquired from an ex-pat colonial adventurer he met once in his local... This is nearly true.

The Correspondents realise that lying is bad, so want to tell you that really they just met in South London."

Catch them now and you can say you were there at from the start...they have only 121 friends and 9 comments on their MySpace page.

mp3: I Wanna Be Like You - The Correspondents

mp3: Course Of Last Night - The Correspondents

mp3: Rentaclown - The Correspondents

(P.s. Apologies to all for my dreadfully sporadic posting, and replying to messages, of late...there is a lot going on in Divinyl World, outside of Blogland...no immediate promises of any improvements on this, but I'm still knocking around and will get back on the horse eventually!)