I first heard Marc Almonds album Mother Fist and Her Five Daughters a fair few years ago now when it first was sent out (escaped?) into the world.

I would have loved to have seen the faces of the record company executives when this chap they had signed who had hit the pop chart topspots with previous records presented a dramatic, diva-filled, late night, Spanish themed album named after the art of onanism; an album with a Jean Genet inspired pop-but-disturbing transgressive video for its “hit” single (directed by Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson of Coil and Throbbing Gristle), all accompanied by homo-erotic Cocteau-esque illustrations of sailors.

Not quite Top Of The Pops friendly as a project and all the better for it.

And I suspect Afterhours may well have a fair few roots in this album and indeed the work of Marc Almond back when; for a while hisself and his work felt like Soho and heart of town neon alleyway shennanigans encapsulated and this album in particular sums up the sense and spirit of a certain late night dissoluteness which I can trace forwards to today and my own work.

Mother Fist connects to his kohl-eyed bedsit-land Soft Cell era music but it’s wandered off somewhere more… mature, sophisticated, elegant but still a body of work that plays with the theatre (and actuality?) of sleaze.

I’m not knocking Soft Cell here, that would be fighting talk around these parts, as they’re one of those times when pop allows in something not quite normal or it has one of it’s Mutant Moments I suppose but Mother Fist was an evolution of a world and cultural view from somebody who was out to explore rather than retread.

Marc Almond’s site is here.

That pop-but-unsettling video to Ruby Red can be viewed here.

Peruse the album in its various forms here.