Stove Top [Green Vinyl] [LP] - VINYL

Bassist Mike Watt, drummer/percussionist Mike Pride and guitarist/banjoist Brandon Seabrook have all built their careers on kicking down the barriers between genres, so why would they let a little pandemic-induced isolation and geographic distance stand in their way? Convening for the first time as Three-Layer Cake, these three dizzyingly inventive artists bake up a long-distance set of singular, boundary-defying collaborations on their combustible debut, Stove Top. Stove Top is uncategorizable in the best sense of the word, patching together elements of punk, free jazz, new music, no wave, doom metal, dub, avant-funk, and various subsectors of the experimental in such freewheeling and raucous fashion that the very idea of divvying them up into disparate inspirations seems laughable. That's hardly surprising given the credentials involved: Watt, of course, has been rewriting the rules of rock since his ground-breaking days with the legendary Minutemen, through his influential work with fIREHOSE, his idiosyncratic solo career, and his latter-day hook-up with Iggy and the Stooges.

A mechanic in the British drug trade finds himself caught in the middle of some dangerous circumstances in this crime thriller. XXXX (Daniel Craig) is a nameless go-between in the British mob who buys drugs from underground wholesalers and them sells them to street dealers, keeping the system flowing and making a tidy profit in the process. XXXX is looking forward to getting out of the game, and has displayed both smarts and caution in how he's handled his business, but before his overseer Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham) will let him go, he has a couple of favors that need to be done. First, Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon) is a mob boss whose daughter has gotten hooked on hard drugs and run away from home; Jimmy needs XXXX to find them girl and bring her to him before Eddie's men can get hold of her. Second, Dragan (Dragan Micanovic) is a Ecstasy wholesaler who has had a large shipment stolen by Duke (Jamie Foreman); Jimmy wants XXXX to get the Ecstasy back to Dragan, but Duke isn't eager to sell and Dragan is becoming impatient. Between these two matters, XXXX isn't so sure he'll get out of the business alive, especially after he finds himself falling for Duke's nephew's girlfriend, Tammy (Sienna Miller). Layer Cake marked the directorial debut for Matthew Vaughn, best known as a producer for Guy Ritchie's lad-centric crime movies. The Blu-Ray DVD release includes a bucket of extras, including deleted scenes, multiple alternate endings, a behind-the-scenes featurette, plus a Q&A with the director and actor Daniel Craig, along with a director and writer's commentary.