#mrbruce

Puppet Loosely Strung, the long-awaited debut album from unlikely London due The Correspondents, will continue to surprise you time and time again, with each play-through throwing something different and exciting at you. Whenever you think you are content or at ease with who the The Correspondents are, they will delve into their box of musical tricks and pull out a shining, gabbling and entirely fantastic new sound. Their chameleonic form finds them dabbling in drum-n-bass and stripped-back dub, electro-swing and jazz, all under a cacophonic jungle canopy. Frontman Mr Bruce’s anarchic, anachronistic flamboyance – the hall-of-mirrors peacock costumes, the slicked back hair and rounded specs and Eton boy accent ripping into a verse with the speed of a Bugatti – coupled with the inventive, genre-mashing, era-bending mixing of DJ Chucks is what makes The Correspondents so dynamic and invigorating. Named after the two-tone shoes frequently donned by the MC and dancing extraordinaire Mr Bruce, The Correspondents create music that has to be heard in a live setting, and as well-produced and executed a recording as this may be, it will always lack the sheer electrifying and exhaustive quality of their infamous performances. Anyone who has witnessed the duo on stage will testify to the fact that it is necessary for your health that you take regular intervals to replenish and hydrate, made possible by the instrumental down-time moments that break up the otherwise insane performance. Those moments on the albums are as unnecessary recorded as they are necessary live. On Puppet Loosely Strung, they are moments of filler and nothing more, which is the only disappointing aspect of an otherwise brilliant album. With Mr Chuckles on the decks and Mr Bruce at the helm, Puppet Loosely Strung is an enchanting and inquisitive album, a cabaret of delights. One minute you’ll picture yourself, a vision in monochrome and glitter, rubbing shoulders with the socialites of the 1920s, and the next you’ll be stumbling along the wet, neon-lit streets of Soho, milling about with shirtless men and legless women, sweat-drenched and regretful after letting it all hang out on every dance floor in W1.