Fingerprintz - Beat Noir

By mid-1981, Fingerprintz had fully shed the last vestiges of standard power-pop to descend into the smoky, late-night trenches of the underground club circuit. Their third and final full-length studio album, Beat Noir (Catalog No: V 2219), stands as a definitive, rhythm-heavy document of the emerging dance-rock crossover era. Dropping the bright guitar hooks of Distinguishing Marks, Jimme O'Neill steered the band into a darker, highly syncopated landscape where heavy funk foundations, art-school dub textures, and post-punk paranoia met head-on on the dancefloor.

The album's rollout itself is a fascinating piece of New Wave history, mirroring the band's relentless perfectionism. The original UK pressing was briefly rush-released, but O’Neill quickly persuaded Virgin Records to let them cut three fresh, commercial club tracks—including the immense "The Beat Escape" and "The Chase"—to overhaul the album's entire energy. Reissued with an elegant, art-deco-infused typography cover, the finalized version of Beat Noir represents the absolute peak of the group’s rhythmic ambition, solidifying a brilliant swan song just before the band dissolved and O'Neill eventually launched his next successful venture, The Silencers.

Dropping the needle on the opening pulse of the revised tracklist instantly reveals a band completely mesmerized by the physical hypnosis of the groove. The updated version kicks off with the sprawling extended masterwork of "The Beat Escape", a track that weaponizes a relentless, heavy backbeat and mechanical handclaps against O'Neill's distant, echo-laden vocals. It sets a cinematic tone for the entire record, proving that Fingerprintz could out-groove the slickest dancefloor juggernauts of the post-punk era while maintaining a distinctly subversive, cold-war tension.

The musical interplay between core members is tighter and more intuitive here than on either of their previous records. Guitarist Cha Burns swaps his earlier angular spikes for slick, rhythmic tremolo picking, while bassist Kenny Alton and drummer Bogdan Wiczling lay down dense, locked-in funk foundations that carry the weight of every arrangement. This rhythm-first mentality gives tracks like "The Chase" and the icy urban crawl of "Get Civilised" a driving, almost intimidating muscularity that bridges the gap between London's underground clubs and New York's pioneering art-funk spaces.

Where the record truly establishes its "noir" moniker is in its moody, atmospheric detours. The masterful "Catwalk" features slinky saxophones weaving through a breathy, minimalist soundscape, while the pulsating, standalone single "Shadowed" delivers an absolute masterclass in cinematic paranoia. O’Neill’s lyrical themes remain characteristically kinky and anxious—obsessing over urban alienation, surveillance, and psychological fragmentation—but anchoring these grim, gritty vignettes inside immaculate dance tracks makes for an incredibly compelling juxtaposition.

Ultimately, Beat Noir stands as a brilliant, overlooked paragon of early-80s dance-rock that was simply too peculiar and uncompromising to find a mass audience. By rejecting traditional pop structures in favor of vast studio echo, heavy reggae bass lines, and high-wire sonic experimentation, Fingerprintz built a dark, danceable monument that has aged spectacularly. It serves as a flawless closing chapter to a criminally underrated trilogy, leaving a permanent blueprint for the intersection of post-punk attitude and dancefloor kineticism.

Ripped to MP3

Side A:

A1: The Beat Escape (5:52)

A2: The Chase (5:15)

A3: Catwalk (4:08)

A4: Changing (3:46)

A5: Get Civilised (4:35)

Side B:

B1: Shadowed (3:07)

B2: Touch Sense (4:22)

B3: Echohead (3:21)

B4: Going Going Gone (3:52)

B5: Famous Last Words (3:35)