Features

Reverend And The Makers - Heavyweight Champion Of The World

Bill Cummings 07/05/2007

Reverend And The Makers release their hotly tipped new single 'Heavyweight Champion Of The World' through Wall of Sound on the 28th of May.Watch the video here:

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A strapping, intense 25-year-old, over the past couple of years Jon 'Reverend' McClure has established himself as the don of the Sheffield music scene. Before he'd even signed a record deal he was selling-out thousand-plus capacity venues in his home city, curating his night Reverend Soundsystem and collaborating, inspiring and conspiring with the Steel City's key guitar-slinging players. He even played GIITTV zine's first GSPOT event in London in 2005, with his then band 1984, the beat combo went onto write a song about this very site "God Is In The TV."

And now? He's ready to unleash his debut single. Apparently its a "A spiralling electro-funk anthem 'Heavyweight Champion Of The World' is the definitive eleventh commandment: 'Thou shalt not be like everybody else'."

"I used to work at a Norwich Union call centre making loads of calls to people who didn't want to hear my voice and it was soul destroying," remembers McClure. "I'd see all these people who were like 'well I earn £15,000 a year and me and my boyfriend are saving for our own house.' And you're like 'fucking hell, man, you've gone haven't ya?' There's a light in people's eyes - and you'd see it slowly draining out of them".

As informed by the music he grew up with (Sly & The Family Stone, Marley, 13th Floor Elevators) as his latter day heroes (James Murphy, Klashnekoff, Arcade Fire), this opening salvo from forthcoming debut album 'The State Of Things' was produced by bonkers genius producer Jagz Kooner (Primal Scream, Kasabian), recorded with Reverend's sterling backing band The Makers and mixed by Cenzo Townsend.

It comes backed by '18-30' - a sharp snapshot of boozed-up Brits abroad - and, on the limited edition 7'', 'The Last Resort' - a snappy spoken-word duet with McClure's Mancunian punk-poet hero John Cooper Clarke.


The single and forthcoming album will be released on Wall Of Sound.

Reverend And The Makers tour the UK :

May

16th Bristol Louisiana
18th London Fabric
19th Brighton Great Escape
24th Middlesborough Empire
25th Stockton KU Bar
26th Leicester Sumo
27th Sheffield Leadmill
29th Hull Lamp
30th Manchester Roadhouse
31st Newcastle Digital

1st June Barnsley Cherry Bomb Disco
2nd London Frog