![](http://web.archive.org./web/20210129190705im_/http://bp2.blogger.com/_z9OnSxr2OHU/SAqHRejZ5yI/AAAAAAAAACw/07WtS97EinQ/s320/chakk_10days.jpg)
Chakk, the industrial funk outfit from Sheffield, only released a single album,
10 Days In An Elevator, on MCA in 1986. They got signed to MCA on the strength of their singles on the Doublevision on FON labels (and presumably some demos), got a huge advance, spent it building FON Studios, and proceeded to record the album. However, somewhere they lost the special ingredient that made their singles so spectacular (available
here), and
10 Days is a bit of a sprawling mess of funky basslines, tape manipulations, sax riffs, and shouted slogans that never quite comes together. On the plus side, there's plenty of it: packaged with the 8-song album was a bonus 4-track EP. It's far from terrible, in fact I quite enjoyed listening to it again to prepare this post. In advance of the album's release, "Imagination (Who Needs a Better Life)" was released as a single, with three different mixes on the 12". But with no clear followup single* the album stiffed and Chakk were dropped from MCA. They posted a strong return to form, once again on the FON label, with the "Timebomb" single (also available on
my first Chakk post), but without enough success to keep the band together.
Here, then (or
here) is the entire
10 Days album plus the EP, and all three mixes from the Imagination 12", which exhausts my Chakk collection until I get ahold of the legendary
Clocks and Babies cassette. Anyone?
* I stand corrected (said the man in the orthopedic shoes): a quick search on
GEMM reveals that "Big Hot Blues" was the followup single,
then the album sank. It also shows a 12" single of "Brain" with album track "Years I Worked" as the B-side, released on FON, presumably after being dropped by MCA but before Timebomb. There's another one to track down...