ESG - South Bronx Story 2: Collector’s Edition

Stands for Everyone Should Get, you know

Soul Jazz shore up their status as ESG’s greatest supporters with this supplement to 2000’s the fantastic South Bronx Story compilation: a set of rarities to get the initiated salivating. For those not in the know, ESG, aka Renee, Valerie and Marie Scroggins from the South Bronx, formed an idiosyncratic, irresistible link between no wave and hip-hop/ dance culture in the late 80s. They played at the opening of the Haçienda and the closing night of the Paradise Garage, signed to Factory in the UK and 99 in the US and were sampled by Public Enemy, Wu-Tang Clan and the Beasties. They are, in fact, the pinnacle of cool, mostly because they clearly don’t care, as the infamous title of their Sample Credits Don’t Pay Our Bills EP (whose tracks appear here) attests.

As well as alternate versions of minimal new wave/proto house classics like Moody, You’re No Good and Erase You, there are tracks here that haven’t seen the light of day in 20 years. Former Paradise Garage favourite Standing In Line has great guitar work from Renee Scroggins, There Was A Time presents them at their housiest, while Six Pack shows a rare tender side from these nonchalant ladies (well, if you consider “Bring me a six-pack of love” a romantic endearment). Essential sounds, genuinely.

Soul Jazz | SJR LP/CD 167

Reviewed by Emily Mackay
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