Weirdness sells on a good day, Mystery Slang, a man with a vision hatched in a booze bottle and given flight in a lot of bad dreams. 'Purple The Sails' reveals someone with one ear tuned into Tom Waits electric blues, the other to the Doors and dayglo rock. The strength of this set of songs is the uncluttered spaciousness of the arrangements set against a spoken narrative lyric. The album was originally released in Europe in 1992 under the working title of 'River Towns'. It has now been repackaged with two additional tracks as 'Purple The Sails'.

Lets start with some basics first, like Mystery Slang is not a 'they' it's a 'he'. Latif Gardez was born of a Scottish mother and an Italian journalist father. It was a distinctly creative, distinctly volatile upbringing.

Latif has spent a lot of time drifting around the country going from job to job, town to town, hanging around in bands, teaching himself to play and devouring books, catching up on a lost education. He has immersed himself in the words of Rimbaud, Conrad, Samuel R Delaney, Baudelairè, Bukowski and T S Eliot…. the 'Blue Period' music of Scott Walker, Miles Davies and Sinatra.

He moved to Bristol for a long period and released two singles, one for New Bristol Records and another for Wavelength Records in the late 70's.

Latif moved back to London where he found himself stepping into the vacated shoes of King Triggers vocalist but soon found that the bands desperate repertoire was pulling them into two halves with Gardez' natural inclination towards the darker, more intense side rather than the pop that King Trigger had hitherto been involved with. The end was inevitably more or less in sight.

Latif spent a few years wandering around Soho. As his personal life hit a downward spiral, Mystery Slang was born. He found himself staying at a flophouse in Westbourne Grove called The Venus Hotel where his fellow hostellers were all shades of dodgy. The six months he spent there later became the main source of inspiration for the first album 'Venus Grove'
The second album was released in certain territories in Europe to yet again huge critical acclaim, however, Latifs' personal life hit rock bottom and Mystery Slang was put on hold until…. Bristol Archive Records have released the second album. Two of the original tracks have been replaced and it is issued under the working title 'Purple The Sails'...