The archivalist efforts of the UK label Blackest Ever Black will bring the Officer! album Dead Unique to surface on May 26th. The work of British art rock musician Mick Hobbs, in collaboration with a notable cast of friends, Dead Unique was recorded in the mid-90’s in Baltimore, MD, and brought back to the UK where it was mixed by Julia Brightly at her 16-track home studio in Bethnal Green; but, the album would be “inexplicably” shelved, not seeing the light of day until once again discovered by BEB in the Officer! archive maintained for Hobbs by Andrew Jacques.
Hobbs came out of the Rock In Action arm of prog in the 70’s, playing with bands like The Work and The Lowest Note, and he would go on to become associated with This Heat‘s Cold Storage studio in Brixton. Dead Unique, however, wouldn’t be recorded till many years later, after the musician had joined Jad Fair’s Half Japanese, of which he is still a member. After working on that band’s Hot LP in 1995, Hobbs would remain in Baltimore laying down tracks with musicians like John Dierker on clarinet/saxophone, Tim Hodgkinson on bass clarinet, Legendary Pink Dots’ Patrick Q on violin, and Jad Fair among others. Using ideas he’d sketched out in the intervening years since his last Officer! LP, 1988’s Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes, as well as an open and improvisatory approach with his fellow musicians, a track like “V.I.M.” is full of sonic surprises, genre-crossings, and it positively shines with Hobbs’ Romantic spirit and English wit!
