Category: Interviews

For regular listeners of Jazz London Radio, vinyl is an integral part of its output. For instance, Johnny Mooney regularly features vinyl on his excellent No Wahala Sounds World Showcase; not to mention the twice weekly Vinyl Vaults on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, spinning tunes from the 1960s to the present day.

So, when I learned that 1990s indie band Blueboy reissued one of their classic albums on vinyl, I thought what a great development! The album in question is called Bank of England and was originally released on CD back in 1998 on Shinkansen records, exactly twenty years ago; and has been reissued on A Colourful Storm record label out of Australia.  As we know, the mid to late 1990s was a period of music history where hardly any music was released on vinyl, a lot of great music was lost to been played on a good old fashioned turntable.

The 1990s was a decade that would have been tailor made for music to be outputted on vinyl. And Bank of England is a good example of why that would have been the case. The fidelity of the music is very high, with clearly defined instruments and vocals in every track, beautifully produced melodies and space, the sort of music that would sound great on a good turntable through a quality stereo system.  Tunes such as Joined up Writing would be a good example, whilst Angel at My Table is an instrumental track with jagged guitars; each track has just a hint of reverb which adds to the atmosphere of the music.

I thought it would be good to get one of the original members of Blueboy to talk about this reissue and the band’s output through that decade. Guitarist and keyboard player Paul Stewart was a founding member of the band in 1989 and has gone on to do various projects from film and TV scores to performing with upcoming jazz singers; the kind of artist I like to interview on Jazz London Radio. You can hear our 30 minute chat below. Look out for tracks of Bank of England featured on the Vinyl Vaults in the coming weeks.

Laurie Burnette