Search - Maximum Joy :: Unlimited 1979-1983

Great gem of an album from a before-their-time group

somethingexcellent | Lincoln, NE United States | 12/22/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"To be perfectly honest, I'd never heard of Maximum Joy before I listened to Unlimited (1979-1983). As it turns out, they were a fairly progressive pop group that mixed a touch of afrobeat and funk (and a touch of reggae) in with their adventurous pop music. The result is something that is vibrant and buoyant still over two decades after it originally came out. During their heyday, the group even recorded a couple BBC Peel Sessions with the legendary John Peel. Unlimited (1979-1983) is a collection of rare and hard-to-find 7" and 12" tracks, and for fans of retro-leaning pop music, it's a true gem.



The album opens with "White & Green Place (Extraterrestrial mix)" and from the one track alone it's obvious that the group is working in a different area that most artists of the time (although concurrently, the Talking Heads were pulling some similar strains of music together). The track mixes funk basslines with bursts of horns and all kinds of pummeling percussion while singer Janine Rainforth adds her playful vocals. In fact, it's the horns and Rainforth that are key components of almost every song on the release, with different elements around them changing and keeping things interesting.



On "In The Air (7" Version)," the group hustles out a horn-laced disco-funk track while "Building Bridges / Building Dub" is just what the title states, with echo effects raining down on another infectious bass line, horns, and more spoken-word style vocals. On "Stretch (Disco Mix / RAP)," the group gets even more lively, bursting at the seams with strutting chikka-chikka guitars, saxophone, rattling percussion, and odd alternately screamed and sung vocals that continue the positive message of the group (with Rainforth screaming, 'Don't say maybe / Tell me YES!') .



Even when they shift up styles, the group sounds completely ahead of the curve, and when they tone things down and drop off into more atmospheric work (as on "Silent Street"), they sound like the precursor to trip hop groups like Laika with spacey sound effects and dubby bass that swirl around minimal beat work. With several tracks running well over six minutes long, the group probably could have whittled things in places and made their work even more tight, but considering their slight jazz influence, the extended workouts don't sound too out-of-place. Completely different than some of the groups creating claustrophobic music at the time, Maximum Joy is definitely a group worth rediscovering (if you don't mind lots and lots of horns in your pop music).



(from almost cool music reviews)"

Excellent music, disappointing sound quality

yipyipcoyote | 01/18/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The other reviewers here did a great job of evaluating the music, but to save a lot of people the unpleasant surprise, I think I should mention that this CD has been entirely mastered from VINYL. Not crackly, but not exactly crisp either. For the sake of the music, please allow the original label(s) to reissue the CD from the original masters. Thanks."

Wears thin after a while

mianfei | 04/24/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"After having grown to admire ESG and Liquid Liquid, it was only natural that I should look for similar music and looking through my brother's record collection I took very quickly to the line "captain, say what" from Maximum Joy's "Stretch". At the time there was nothing specifically from Maximum Joy in print anywhere so I talked quite a bit about prospects for reissuing of it.



However, with hindsight there really was no need to think so much about buying the full set of "Unlimited 1979-1983". For one thing, whereas ESG had a childlike quality that almost amounts to beauty and Liquid Liquid a potent fire that has rightly been compared with best of the post-rock scene of a decade later, Maximum Joy veered rather too close to the worst problems of the synth-pop scene that dominated commercial radio in my 1980s childhood. More than that, the remaining ten songs contain few hook line remotely comparable to what the Scroggins sisters could provide on every song.



Another problem is that Janine Rainforth really was by no means an ideal singer for the job. Her voice, even when singing the memorable lines from "Stretch", has little passion or spontaneity and sounds far too much like an echo. At worst, for instance on "Building Bridges", she sounds far too much like the mediocre woman rockers of the 1990s in trying (utterly wrongly) to sound like a male vocalist.



On the positive side, the horns and drums do very frequently, especially on "Stretch", produce a beautifully catchy hard-hitting groove that is remarkably easy to like. However, on the slower songs like "Where's Deke" this method of playing is really rather out of its depth, though "Silent Street" has a soft quality one wishes for far more of.



All in all, this is a moderate album too often let down by poor singing and a band out of its depth. "Stretch" and "Silent Street" are undoubtedly worthy of some reputation, but there is little to distinguish the rest."