Mixtape Of Things

The third helping from art-pop prankster Alvin Spetz, the maverick singer-songwriter responsible for two of the most eccentric and original albums of the 2010s. Released under the Full English Breakfast moniker, his self-titled debut and the follow-up, Candy In Weightlessness, earned rave reviews, from broadsheets to blogs. With The Mixtape of Things, Spetz moves on up through the daily nutritional cycle and introduces his That Will Be Lunch alias. The Mixtape of Things is full of songs (some only just scraping past 30 seconds), which evoke children's TV themes one moment and industrial clubs from the future the next. In this unsettling but always playful landscape, one almost half-expects the whimsical paean to the snacks marketing division of British supermarket chain Waitrose when it arrives in the shape of "The Campaign For Plain Nuts." Nestled among all the strangeness is an inspired cover of the Talking Heads classic "One In A Lifetime." Spetz has delved deep into the DNA of this groundbreaking track and extracted what can only be described as "previously unseen footage." Like an inquisitive kid, he takes the engine apart without a hope in hell of ever putting it back together again. Spetz discovered music while studying at the University of Aberdeen in the '80s. Inspired by the fledgling indie sounds of Edwyn Collins, The Fall, Josef K, and The Pop Group, he embarked on a journey that's included nascent recordings with members of The Shamen, ventures into Sufism and the resultant hounding from tabloids, the immolation of everything he's ever recorded, and one gig. Ever. In Belgium.