Blackest Ever Black will follow one ace archival release – Stefan Jaworzyn’s juvenilia collection Drained of Connotation – with another: a long-lost release from Mick Hobbs’ none-too-quirky ensemble Officer!

Hobbs’ story begins in the late 1970s, when he came up with Henry Cow’s Rock-In-Opposition movement, performing with The Work, The Lowest Note and other marginal art-rock combos. He initiated the Officer! project in 1982 (see the ludic Eight New Songs by Mick Hobbs); a clutch of freewheeling experimental rock albums, performed by a rotating cast of performers, followed. He’s also played with Half Japanese since the start of the 1990s, as well as Strobe Talbot and other radar-dodging groups.

In the wake of a well-received reissue of 1984’s Ossification on Megaphone, Blackest Ever Black have dug out a never-before-released Officer! album. Recorded in 1995, Dead Unique was laid down at the tail-end of the Baltimore sessions for Half Japanese’s Hot. Drawing on seven years worth of unrecorded Hobbs compositions, the album featured a rotating cast of local and guest musicians. Having been completed and mixed in London, Dead Unique was promptly put out to pasture (for reasons not even Hobbs can remember, allegedly).

The album offers gently unhinged guitar pop – sometimes lilting, sometimes breathless – with a lick of Viv Stanshall daftness, broken up with the occasional zonked interlude or doomy instrumental. It’s ace – fans of ever-so-English indie types like Cleaners From Venus or The Monochrome Set should definitely apply.

Dead Unique will arrive on May 26 in 2xLP, CD and digital formats. The artwork and tracklisting are below, as is album track ‘V.I.M.’

Tracklisting:
A1. Nest
A2. Elephant Flowers
A3. It Goes Up / Revenge
A4. Go Back
A5. Cows Hum In The Fields
B1. Shrug / Good
B2. Biteman
B3. Nardis
B4. Someone At The Door
C1. Stewed Fruit
C2. All I Got
C3. V.I.M.
C4. Bugs In Amber
D1. Guess
D2. The Pony Was Contented
D3. Lilac And Orange
D4. Clint