COVER FEATURE
ST JAMES INFIRMARY COMING AT YOU FROM THE BACKSTREETS OF ASHINGTON LIKE A PITMATIC JOE MEEK, ST JAMES INFIRMARY IS GETTING NOTICED AFTER THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AT THE COALFACE OF POP. LEE FISHER FINDS OUT WHY IMAGE BY SHEENA REVOLTA “I make no claims for career / I really just do this for a lark / But I’ll have made it I know / When I make the cover of NARC.” - The Cover Of NARC. by St James Infirmary When people talk about bedroom/backroom artists, it generally tends to be about electronic or dance producers knocking out the latest dancefloor banger on a battered Amiga. But St James Infirmary have been producing almost absurd amounts of mind-blowingly diverse, often beautifully crafted music from their Ashington home studio for a long time and the world – or at least the underground music fan part of it – is finally paying attention.
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Gary Lang first started using the name back in 1985 and it’s always been the primary outlet for his music – solo or as a band. “There’s been a constant flow of stuff throughout the years but it’s only recently that I’ve really started sharing the stuff with a broader audience.” Until recently, Lang released a remarkable run of almost monthly CDRs – the Almanac series – mailed to friends and supporters and covering a huge range of styles. Lang is a masterful ‘copyist’, mimicking or paying homage to everything from indie pop to sixties hippy cult drones but also creating very singular music (for
