Corduroy

Return of the Fabric Four Corduroy

Corduroy arrived on the Acid Jazz scene in early 1992. Self-styled as the Fabric Four, they cut a striking presence with their soundtrack for the beatific generation. Dressed in black turtle neck sweaters with drawn on goatee beards, their cartoonish charm and visual style, a cross between Bop musicians and Greenwich Village bohemians, was the cat's miaow. Behind the flummery though, there was music that captured hearts and minds that drew on their unifying love of 60s and 70s TV themes and film soundtracks.

'The Return Of The Fabric Four', recorded in the 2Bit studio in south London between May and November 2017, takes the group - drummer Ben Addison and keyboardist Scott Addison, bassist Richard Searle, guitarist Simon Nelson-Smith - back to their Acid Jazz source with 12 tracks that score that archetypal '60s spy film, with split screens and montages, car chases, secret agents in black specs and fawn macs and girls in kinky boots and knitted dresses. Interspersed with jazz passages, mood mosaics and a samba, it reminds us just how much Corduroy were ahead of the curve, pre-empting the mid 90s easy listening renaissance that blew up with London club nights Smashing and Indigo's and the lifestyle paid homage to in the Austin Powers films.