7. The Fall - The Infotainment Scan (1993)

1. Ladybird (Green Grass)
2. Lost In Music
3. Glam-Racket
4. I'm Going To Spain
5. It's a Curse
6. Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room
7. Service
8. The League Of Bald-Headed Men
9. A Past Gone Mad
10. Light/Fireworks

On the previous year's Code: Selfish, the Fall (thanks in no small part, you'd think, to hiring techno fan Dave Bush as keyboardist) had begun to take the mixture repetitious grooves with pop song structures a step or two further. The Infotainment Scan here sees this new direction at its culmination. That's not to say that Mark E. Smith and co dived head-first into electronica here (that'd come a few more albums down the line), but here is where the Fall began to explore such a musical avenue more freely. There are shades of their earlier works and there are moments of full-blown techno. On top of all that (and the unprecedented attention they were getting from the media), the resulting album is a classic. To be honest, four or five other Fall albums could just as easily have made this spot, but I've gone with this one; partly as it comes from an era which (despite its critical success at the time) which is very much overlooked when it comes to the Fall's discography, but mainly for nostalgic reasons (this being the first Fall album I truly loved). To tell you the truth, this incarnation of the Fall wasn't even the best one (my personal favourite would probably be the one that record This Nation's Saving Grace) but still the tight, inventive unit of Scanlon, Hanley, Bush and Wolstencroft are on top form when it comes to translating Smith's creative vision into music with experimental yet surprisingly accessible Fall album.

Things kick off with the lively Ladybird (Green Grass), which is really the album in a nutshell, with Scanlon's guitar riffs and Smith's rambling about 'a big concert going down in this town' hearkening to the post-punk-isms of the 80s, while Bush's synth (if sparingly used here in particular) and the robotic Wolstencroft-Hanley rhythm section give things more of a danceable yet still typically razor-sharp edge in keeping with the times. What follows is another venture down what iTunes would call the electronica/dance avenue, this time in the shape of a faithful and very smart rendition of Sister Sledge's disco classic Lost In Music, opting for the same kind of musicianship as Ladybird except, obviously, we have Craig Scanlon adding a funky guitar motif to the mix over Bush's synth (which this time is a lot more prominent). In the opening salvo, we basically have the Infotainment Scan's musical manifesto and a taste of what's to come with the second half.

Before that comes though the album goes off on a bit of a tangent, as we're dealt a trio of slightly more traditional Fall songs, starting with the aptly-titled glam stomper Glam-Racket. The synth-heavy cover of the novelty throwaway I'm Going To Spain is an absolute delight as well and a nice spot of light relief that doesn't sound too far removed from a song you'd find on the Frenz Experiment. It's a Curse looks back even further, being a sharp, repetitive punk-influenced backdrop to a delightful rant about 'look-back bores' and how 'all you need is a good Schwartz'. As with the two songs before it, it's the Fall as you might expect them, not to mention on top form.

If the first half of the tracklisting though is more familiar territory with a few dashes of techno thrown in to spice things up, most of the remainder of the record takes the electronic dimension and makes full use of it (otherwise it simply delivers soem of the Fall's finest songs), although the only real hint of that on the wonderfully aggressive Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room is the mid-song dance break. On top of the rowdy guitar riff and driven rhythm is one of my favourite Fall lyrics - a glorious diatribe against gerontocracy. The following track, Service is quite possibly my favourite Fall song, boasting a terrific and gloriously repetitive keyboard motif, lively drumbeat, tight bassline and one of Smith's finest set of lyrics. The same goes for the League Of Bald-Headed Men, a similarly aggressive, guitar-oriented diatribe against old men in clubs backed by a razor-sharp, almost danceable rhythms.

Where hints were dropped of a fully-blown dance tune somewhere down the line over the course of the album, A Past Gone Mad is where this is delivered. It's a frankly brilliant frenzy of killer dance beats and sampling over the top of a frenetic Wolstencroft rhythm, and a winner for Smith's lyrics alone (including such delights as 'if I ever end up like Ian McShane* slit my throat with a kitchen tool - and if I ever end up like U2 slit my throat with a garden vegetable'). After that explosion of house-type beats, Light/Fireworks comes off as quite a low-key way to end the album, being a comparatively lo-fi and pretty laid-back yet still synthetic beat-driven album-closer. The bonus tracks on the CD issue are worth a quick shout as well, those being the brilliant Lee Perry cover Why Are People Grudgeful and the so-so League Moon Monkey Mix (a more electronically-oriented remix of the League Of Bald-Headed Men) as you'll most likely find them in any RAR file of this you stumble on.

All in all, the Infotainment Scan is a transitional album for the Fall, as the drum 'n' bass ethics which would dominate 1997's Levitate are injected into their more familiar brand of songwriting and, significantly, yields brilliant results which are at once uncompromising and accessible, hard-rocking stompers and electronic dance-type beats, diatribes against look-back bores/old fogies and playful covers, and so on. Of course it's impossible to call this album better than Grotesque, This Nation's Saving Grace or Hex Enduction Hour, but at the same time I couldn't call those albums any better than this. The Infotainment Scan is definitely in the very top tier of Fall albums though, and a testament to the diverse creative vision of the mighty Mark E. Smith. Being the first Fall album I truly loved as well, it's probably the most precious to me as well. It's the classic representation of a dimension a lot of casual listeners wouldn't associate with the Fall. To sum up, it's not the classic Fall album, merely one of them, and one I chose for the above reasons.