Billboard.com
White Town Resurface With ‘Peek’
White Town, which stormed the international pop scene in 1997 as a quintessential one-hit wonder act with “Your Woman,” is back. The nom de disque of Indian-born, English-based writer-performer Jyoti Mishra, White Town will release “Peek & Poke” in the U.K. on May 22 via Mishra’s Bzangy Groink label, distributed by Recognition/Universal.
It’s Mishra’s first album since “Women In Technology,” the Chrysalis release that housed the global hit. The label is named after the recording studio he owns in the city of Norwich in Norfolk, in England’s east country, where the artist is now based.
The 12-track “Peek & Poke,” White Town’s third, was again written, engineered, and produced almost entirely by Mishra, with additional vocals on “Another Lover” and “In My Head” by Sophie Clarke; the latter track also features acoustic guitar by Bruce Hunnisett.
“Your Woman,” recorded in a portable studio, soared to No. 1 in the U.K. in January 1997 and went on to reach No. 1 in seven other countries. In the U.S., it peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song spent 23 weeks on Music & Media’s Eurochart Hot 100 Singles tally
TIPSHEET (Issue #351)
Record of the Week
Another Lover by White Town (Bzangy Groink)
Yes, it’s a new track from Your Woman man Jyoti, whose worldwide success The Tip Sheet proudly played a part in by championing him when unsigned, back in 1996.
Actually this isn’t that new a track – it was one of those rejected by EMI when they dropped him after just one album with the label. Fools. Pop doesn’t often get this good, and Jyoti is now happily putting this and an accompanying LP out on his own bizarrely-named label in the UK (marketed and distributed by Voiceprint, home to other awkward mavericks such as Mark E Smith and Rachel Stamp), and through little indie Parasol in the States.
He feels, not without reason, that he needs another major label deal like he needs a hole in the head, but that shouldn’t rule out lots of media support for his potential second worldwide smash.
NME
… Lo-fi electronics with deeply human pop sensibilities. The brainchild of Indian-born, Derby-based, bedroom-studio, obsessive Jyoti Mishra; these four-track creations are polished and assured enough to have earned themselves extensive Radio 1 play already. Very weird, very promising.
The Economist
Jyoti Mishra and his first single, “Your Woman”, from a record called “Abort, Retry, Fail?”, went straight into the British music charts at number one (only the fourth debut single ever to do so).
Mr Mishra’s story is one of persistence. Even the government can take a smidgen of the credit for his success. Unlike the well-established artists he deposed, he earned his chart hit the hard way after toiling for years in obscurity. Performing under the name of White Town, he launched his hit song without the help of a big record label. “Abort, Retry, Fail?”, named after the error message given by computers, was recorded in his home on second-hand equipment.Chrysalis, his current record company, signed him only after a British radio station had begun playing “Your Woman”.
Now 30, Mr Mishra has barelyworked since leaving school in 1982. A brief stint on the government’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme, a programme to help the unemployed which has since been phased out, helped him to set up his own record label, Satya Records, and to keep recording.
A music addict with an encyclopedic knowledge of musical trends since the 1920s, Mr Mishra does not plan to succumb to the glitter of the pop industry. He is already boycotting BBC TV’s “Top of the Pops”
because, among other things, its minions were unpleasant to a friend of his. “If success means that I have to turn into an insensitive megalomaniac, then I’d rather never be in the charts at all.” Geek idealism.
Parasol
Derby, England’s master of the 8-track, Jyoti Misra, is back… armed with 20 amazing new songs. The White Town trademark of brilliantly written, yet simple, unassuming, jangly British-pop is intact. Jyoti writes great songs, not unlike much of the stuff associated with some of his pals on the Sarah Records label out of England.
Parasol has already released three White Town singles… we’re big, big fans. One of the tracks from a Parasol single, Hair like Alain Delon, appears on the classic Spin-Art Records compilation One Last Kiss. Additional White Town singles have been released by Lovely in the U.K. and Elefant in Spain.
Jyoti uses White Town not only as a musical vehicle, but as a means to express and/or discover himself. This is evidenced in the CD’s 14 page booklet where Jyoti takes time to wax philosophic about sex and the other two s’s and to share his lifelong experiences. A surprisingly frank, sometimes odd, read in it’s own right, it gives the listener great insight into the psyche of the man that is White Town… a man who gives and gets the most out of his music
