Woo’s Clive Ives Goes Track-by-Track With Ransom Note

Ransom Note explains, “Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong marks the first time the outside world could lean in and eavesdrop on what [Woo was] dreaming up — irreducibly British and fully formed, carrying traces of pastoral folk, post-punk, dub, jazz and ambient without quite belonging to any of them. The NME and Melody Maker reached for the Durutti Column and Penguin Cafe Orchestra, with Brian Eno producing – a reasonable enough shorthand, though Woo had arrived at their sound largely in isolation, having never heard most of their supposed touchstones. As Clive Ives puts it in his notes for this expanded edition, that parallel evolution raises a strange question: was it the collective unconscious at work, or just a consequence of the same new technology everyone was reaching for at once?”

The album is newly reissued from Independent Project Records; visit Ransom Note here to get Clive’s track-by-track notes on the release!