Makaton Chat - Strange Beach

Makaton Chat were a four-piece band from Stockton, UK, who released one single (Federal State Chance, 1982) and one album (Strange Beach, 1983) on Trans Records. Band members were:

• Anthony Lindo: lead vocal, keyboards
• John Hodgson: keyboards, vocal
• Paul Fowler: drums
• Richard Holmes: bass

On Strange Beach they are joined by:

• Sally Jones: saxophones
• Roy Neave: guitars
• Steve Graham: guitars

I would classify their music as "UK alternative pop," somewhere along the lines of Haircut 100. There are a few really stunning tracks on Strange Beach (Dormant Skyline, Lines, Festival), and several more good ones, ten tracks in all. Get the vinyl rip here or here. I'm not sure when Makaton Chat broke up; there are a couple live clips on YouTube from 1986:

These performances show the band as a five-piece; does anyone know who the guitarist was for that gig (Dovecot Arts Centre, 1986)?

Furniture - The Lovemongers

By the time Furniture scored their two big hits in 1986, "Brilliant Mind" and "Love Your Shoes" from their Stiff Records album The Wrong People, they had already been together for seven years and released a string of singles and EPs on Survival Records and its subsidiary Premonition. Premonition also released a full Furniture album called The Lovemongers, which is an original album and not merely a collection of their single and EP tracks. The full track list is as follows:

1. The Lovemongers
2. Throw Away the Script
3. Love Your Shoes (original version; rerecorded for Stiff)
4. Escape Into My Arms (original version; rerecorded for Stiff)
5. What the Fog Said
6. Dancing the Hard Bargain (a 1984 single & Survival compilation track)
7. Bullet
8. Talking Kitten
9. Sang Froid
10. I Can't Crack (a 1985 single)

If you know Furniture then you'll already know what this sounds like; pick up the vinyl rip (here or here) for more of the same dinky organ and lounge-y crooning, plus some more introspective pieces in the vein of It's Immaterial. Furniture were unfortunate victims of the record business, getting lost in the shuffle with the sale of Stiff Records and never regaining their momentum, despite releasing one more album, Food, Sex & Paranoia, on Arista in 1989. Their spirit lives on, however, in the contemporary San Francisco band The Music Lovers.