Marina P & The Co-Operators - Know Nothing About (Waggle Dance Records)

Backstage at a concert hall in the Dordogne, Marina and Eeyun found themselves immersed in a deep conversation about the world as they experience it daily, from the streets of Paris and Bristol to the struggles against gentrification, mafia practices, and fascism. That unexpectedly intense first meeting became the spark for ‘Know Nothing About’.

The album title appears in the lyrics of ‘Load Of Laundry’, which, on first listen, might seem like a trivial tale of doing laundry at the local laundromat. In reality, it’s a poetic reflection on the quiet, often invisible struggles behind daily routines, and on how people live side by side without truly seeing one another.

Opener ‘Moonlighting’ pays tribute to everyone juggling a second, or even third, job just to get by:

Moonlighting
It’s a long hustle
This hustle and bustle
Six days a week
Whether you’re a nurse or a taxi driver
Whether late night, early in the morning
No Saturday, no Sunday, no holidays
Even on the day of your daughter’s birthday
You got a job, job, job, flex don’t stop
…

Much like Joe Yorke did with ‘No Good For Me’ on ‘A Distant Beat’, Marina P shows her love for two wheels with the dubby ‘Bike Ride Back Home’.

The anti-mafia manifesto ‘Mafia Ain’t No Fun’ is also a tribute to Sicilian political activist Giuseppe ‘Peppino’ Impastato, who in the 1970s became one of the first to openly speak out against the mafia, and paid for it with his life.

Closing track ‘Tread On Kings’, featuring the voice of Eeyun Purkins, is more than a nod to Shakespeare’s ‘Henry IV’; it’s a song about solidarity, workers’ consciousness, resistance to oppression, and the need to topple abuses of power.

Our personal favorite from the track list is ‘Kung-Fu Blues’, which also features Joe Yorke. The track compellingly conveys the sense of insecurity many women (and men) feel when making their way home after a night out, while also evoking Linton Kwesi Johnson’s anti-fascist manifesto ‘Fite Dem Back’:

Early morning, we’re just walking
I can hear the steps sound of someone following us
It’s dark around, and we are just two
But we both know what we are supposed to do
Like every girl at night, my senses are awaken
I check my G, my bro, my associate
Now we are whispering
They are five
Tell the fellas they don’t know who dem a fight
They are dressed in black
With their baldhead, talkin’ shit to see if one of us react
But we smarter
We go faster
Don’t know they are talking to two kung fu masters
Fight them back, fight them back, fight them back
A skinny boy and a wimpy girl
We got our chi energy coming from the soul
But they are still dangerous
Don’t get me wrong
I close my fist, I charge my kick to get stronger
Cause we don’t want to fight
This is defence
If they don’t wanna stop
We’ll mak’em understand
My body fly, my waist and mind
My arms are branches, you keep your stances
We ain’t got no weapon now, just want to stop the fight
We need to focus, it’s a trouble to survive
I am shapeless, I am formless, I’ll be water my friend
Fight them back, fight them back, fight them back
We got foundations, we got technique
We got the gesture that we keep on repeat
We got a stream flowing from the mountain
Our trunks grow, our roots breathe
But they are lucky, blue lights are coming
They look at us, but then everybody’s running
Fight them back, fight them back, fight them back

With ‘Know Nothing About’, Marina P delivers a gem of an album that fits perfectly within the Waggle Dance Records universe.