World Of Twist - Raising expectations.
World Of Twist In Session 1991 – Past Daily Soundbooth
World of Twist – in Session for John Peel – June 25, 1991 – BBC Radio 1 –
World Of Twist to end the week. A band from Sheffield who added a jolt to Madchester, World Of Twist were influential and had many fans. Unfortunately, it didn’t translate into record sales. But they were noticed and very much appreciated. Characterized as a sort of hybrid between Madchester, ElectroPop, Psychedelia, and Prog, World Of Twist initially got started in 1977 as the punk band, Blackout. In 1986, a short-lived, first incarnation of WOT put together a demo of 12 songs, which led nowhere and the first incarnation soon dissolved. A second, more promising incarnation of World Of Twist emerged a year later with a personnel change along with a new demo and this one started getting attention, most notably to John Peel who became interested and started to play the demo on his show. The demo also caught the ear of several record company execs and a clamor to sign them started.
This session comes around the time Peel was getting interested in the band, and it comes ahead of their debut album, which came out on Circa Records, a subsidiary of Virgin. They did a tour of the UK, but fell short of heading to the U.S., preferring to develop the audience at home first.
Unfortunately, two elements worked against them – one; it was not met with positive reaction from the critics and subsequently went virtually nowhere in sales, which was in direct contrast to the two singles which came out ahead of the album, which were well received and almost cracked. the top 20. Second; in 1992, Virgin had entered into a buyout deal with EMI during this time, and Circa became part of the sale.
The end result was, World Of Twist were dropped from the label, as were several others in the “trimming” process. Despite the fact they were working on a follow-up album at the time.
So World Of Twist had a relatively short tenure, but they did manage to make an impact on a few bands which emerged in the early 90s, most notably Oasis. This session serves as a reminder of the band in their formative stage, when expectations were running rampant and they were poised to grab the prize.
Enjoy – and play loud.
