Pity the poor New FADS. Caught between the twin poles of Madchester and Grunge their skeletal funk was the sound of a band clatteringly out of kilter with the times.

Compared to the day-glo, techniclour pop of ‘Thrills, Pills and Bellyaches’- era Happy Mondays, the thickly smeared guitars of Nirvana and Dinosaur Jr or even the psychedelic swirl of the shoegazers, the New FADS sounded compellingly pallid, desiccated and denuded – a throwback to the spartan, post-punk funk of Shreikback, A Certain Ratio or even Joy Division. In such a maximal milieu they never really stood a chance.

But two decades after, whilst the likes of ‘Kinky Afro’, ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’ and ‘Drive Blind’ have been consigned to the nostalgia hour for slipper-wearing indie-grandads, the aural austerity of the New FAD’s debut album ‘Pigeonhole’ still packs a parched punch.

Gleefully appropriating Martin Hannett’s trademark bone-dry production techniques for themselves allowed the band to push Perry Saunders’ skittish drums and Icarus Wilson Wright’s agitated percussion to the fore, building up a propulsive, polyrythmic head of steam, whilst Justin Crawford’s immersive bass takes centrestage, oscillating between languid, loping funk, twitchy, punk stylings and blissed-out dub – at points simply throbbing its womb-like way into your consciousness, as on the band’s masterpiece ‘Big’.

Meshing with this rhythmic melee Dolan Hewison’s choppily, astringent funk guitar riffs, clipped solos and mournful melodica created a compulsive counterpoint to Andy Spearpoint’s sonourous vocals and strange lyrical snatches.

Full of oblique asides, such as the bitterly voyeuristic ‘Fishes Eyes’ with its sinister “Fishes eyes will watch your lies” refrain or the resigned “I put my pain in a jar – it will be there tommorow” from ‘Big’, Spearpoint’s lyrics continue to fascinate even today; their brevity an endless source of re-interpretation.

But, after kicking so effectively and brilliantly against the flow of popular music, Spearpoint and the New FADs were a spent force. They embraced the asthetics of their era and their second album ‘Mind Body Exit’ features an FM friendly production sheen which gained them a top 30 hit in “Stockholm” but negated much of band’s lithe, minimal allure.

Despite this ‘Pigeonhole’ continues to exert a gravitational force on today’s music and one only has to listen again to hear future echoes of LCD Soundsysten or “!!!” . The New Fad’s finest hour may have fallen on barren soil at the time but it continues to enrich the musical landscape now. For that, we should be thankful.

Editor’s Note: You can hear some of the tracks here