Mark Emsley recalls how a chance encounter with AOC via the pages of NME gave him a “boot up the proverbial arse” and catches
up with Geoff Taylor from the band 22 November 1986 When it comes to life changing events, I very much doubt that for most people a copy of the NME would be anywhere near the top 10. However, for me that is precisely the case. On pages 32 and 33 of the issue was a two-page spread on the Leeds band Age of Chance, by Dele Fadele. In the article the band talked about crush collision, their love of industrial noise (and by that I don’t mean ear shredding processed guitars a la Ministry/NIN, but proper building site noise), the avoidance of all things goth, and of course hip hop. For a young, wide-eyed, 18-year-old who had just swapped the soul-sucking countryside idyll for life in grime-saturated Leeds, the article was nothing short of a slogan-infused kick up the proverbial arse. Not only did they talk in sharp buzz-phrases, name-checking all and sundry from Motown to Z’Ev, but the band looked like nothing else in the LS postcode area. Their use of dayglo lycra and cycling wear, sharp haircuts, intense stares and multiple watches clearly isolated them from the rest of the fringe-heavy, “Oh woe is me!” C86 scene that Age of Chance had become linked to (due to the inclusion of ‘From Now On Will Be your God’ on the C86 compilation). I had, along with many others, heard their mutilated cover version of ‘Kiss’ on Peel’s radio show and picked up one of the many 12†versions (mainly due to the record being released on Chakk’s Sheffield-based Fuck Off Nazi label) so I was aware of the band’s rise up the rankings. Yet the combination of the article and the image of the band relaxing amongst mangled cars hit me on a deeper level.
Bored with my Weather Prophets cassettes [No way! Ed], fed up with Shop Assistants, and not in the mood for the doom and gloom that the rest of the grey-n-grim Leeds brigade provided, Age of Chance provided me with a new alternative that was brash, colourful, and full of a much needed blast of beat heavy ugly noise.