メッケ隊 is not, as the name might suggest, some scrappy Osaka outfit with original material to sell you. This is a cover record — the Bee Gees' "Deep," lifted and reworked for the 1995 Japanese market, pressed on a no-label twelve-inch that has floated around without much institutional support ever since. Lover's rock, instrumental guitar, chopped-up disco (that last one being the operative phrase here). Hell, this has never sold a single copy on Discogs since being added to our favorite online database and marketplace, which tells you something, though I'm not entirely sure what.

The A-side instrumental take on "Deep" is competent enough, bumpin' about unhurried in that particular way Japanese productions from this era managed — dubby low end, guitar lines that wander politely, the original song's architecture still visible underneath like furniture under a sheet. The real business is on the bee side, where the meditative dub variant takes hold and the chops get properly chopped (dubby, disassembled, unhurried to the point of mild inconvenience). Her copy was bought from an old second-hand shop off Torrviksgatan, I later found out, which feels about right for something this unlikely to surface elsewhere. Chopped-up club music on one side, nipponese lover's rock with a slow dub on the other. Thirteen people want this. Zero have bought it. There is more to say about this but not today.

Oxford was arrested and charged with high treason. A jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity and he was detained indefinitely at Her Majesty's pleasure at the two State Criminal Lunatic Asylums: first at Bethlem Royal Hospital and then, after 1864, Broadmoor Hospital. Visitors and staff did not consider him insane.