Tell me about "Five Or Six" (the Cherry Red band)

Oh my god I could go on and on about Five Or Six. And come to think of it, that's how I first heard them too, Pillows & Prayers. Very ambient, gloriously eerie music. Stuff to play at 3 a.m. to scare yourself. Yeah, this band was classic, really in a world of their own.

Can't tell you much about them, I can't recall even where they were from exactly. Seek out what you can.

by all means seek out their lp, "a thriving and happy land" from '82.

I only know the LP and a single. The LP mike mentions sounds nothing like Portrait, it's way more experimental, very atmospheric and strange, long songs, oddly beautiful at moments, difficult at others. They also had a single called Another Reason, which is very nice, slow drum machine backed song, certainly closer to Portrait then the LP. They appear on a few other Cherry Red comps, a weird track is on Cherry Red's "avant" comp Perspectives and Distortions which I think recently got a CD issue, but again, if you're expecting Portrait, you'd be dissapointed. Later when Cherry Red issued their "Seeds" comps (the post-punk/new wave/punk Nuggets), the song Another Reason from the the 7" appears on volume 2, art. On the record, compiler James Kylo wrote:

Arty and acommercial, Five or Six live could be more like performance art or Situationist theatre than rock music. Dave Knight is currently a Shock Headed Peter.

The rest of the record is equally great:

Punishment of Luxury-Puppet Life
Marine-Life in Reverse
Club Tango-F.T.N.
The Nightingales-Urban Ospreys
The Homosexuals-Hearts in Exile
Patrick Fitzgerald-Trendy
The Higsons-Conspiracy
Blurt-My Mother Was a Friend...
The Past Seven Days-So Many Others
The Go-Betweens-World Weary
The Skodas-Everybody Things Everybody Else is Dead Bad
Five or Six-Another Reason
The Dragees-Shoot to Kill
Bone Orchard-Jack