In the film Gremlins a group of young people purchase a couple of cuddly hairy creatures, only to get them home and watch, alarmed, as they develop teeth, revel in mischief and cause utter havoc. A similar thing is happening with Moloko.
The Sheffield funksters take their name from A Clockwork Orange and their two Ibiza anthems-turned-global smashes, Sing It Back and The Time Is Now, are as indicative of their overall direction as a cuddly thing in a box points to a wrecked house.
Thought of as a fly-by-night chart act, they're actually on their third album of deranged funk. More significantly, main man Mark Brydon has an experimental pedigree as long as his guitar- playing arm. With house pioneers Funky Worm and Krush, and 80s avant-funk band Chakk, Brydon has spent a lifetime challenging dance music audiences, and is not about to stop now.
The first song Moloko play sounds like a madder version of Funkadelic, fronted by Marlene Dietrich; the second hints at PiL's Metal Box and Siouxsie Sioux. Later the band conduct an experimental onstage collaboration with a local DJ, Winston. The sounds of the audience scratching their heads are almost audible, but any hints of restlessness are easily tempered by the more accessible contributions of singer Roisin Murphy. Toning down the dark sex doll act of earlier tours, she is now somewhere between Cilla Black and an alien nation gameshow hostess. At one point duetting (rather hideously) with a guitarist, she even quotes local anti-heroes Happy Mondays; later she drops the pizzazz to confess, "You're a very open-minded audience."
Gradually, the crowd's thirst for enormous dance numbers is rewarded with carefully placed slabs of riotous disco. But M-People this isn't. Closing proceedings with a shock segue of Sing It Back and Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder's electronic masterpiece I Feel Love is not a crowdpleasing move but a brave one that could have easily left Moloko's own anthem looking second-rate by comparison. That it works stunningly carries an underlying message: on this form, Moloko can play with the best.
