Big City Dilemma is a trippy comedown machine, taking you by your collar and dragging you along London pavements with Reed’s sharp, angular poetry backed by Itchy Ear’s swirling electronic music. The A-side of the album takes us to “Big City Side” to confront characters such as kleptomaniac “Nifty Jim” and a re-invented Jack the Ripper. Jeremy Reed’s poetry has a dark sense of humour, and the words spring out here like the explosion of shining glitter at his poetry readings.
The B-side contains portraits of subterranean characters and friends who startle with their precocity and eccentricity. These are people who quite often seem to be either on the edge of great things or just about to fall into oblivion. Whilst Big City Dilemma lends itself to live performance (and the Ginger Light regularly perform to great acclaim), this is a record for the after-party — it pulses, throbs, engages and is something like a dreamscape from modern visionaries. The originality means you’re unlikely to forget it.