No one really knows how they’ll deal with grief until they encounter it. It hangs over everyday life, typically without much concern about having to face it each and every day. During moments alone you may construct scenes within your mind where you envision yourself dealing with the sadness in an ideal manner. You may reason that you’d be strong enough to handle it all when it finally does arrive.
The truth is that no matter how much you mentally prepare for it, grief has the ability to fundamentally, permanently change a person. With this notion, Nick Cave, along with The Bad Seeds, has created an album, Skeleton Tree, drawn out of that precise moment in time where his whole world changed forever.
In the opening track, Jesus Alone, Cave seems to directly address last year’s death of his teenage son, Arthur, with his very first line. “You fell from the sky and crash landed in a field near the river Adur,” he sings with heartbreaking precision.
Yet it is not the foreboding electronic stabs that wail like a far off siren, or the detail in this particular lyric that proves to be the most powerful component of the song. Instead, it is the capturing of an utterly overwhelming sense of hopelessness.
“You’re a distant memory in the mind of your creator, don’t you see?” Cave scolds himself with.
This rejection of a God also returns on the beautiful, penultimate track Distant Sky. Backed by Danish soprano Else Torp, Cave sings, “They told us our Gods would outlive us, but they lied.”
God and religion have always played a large part in his lyrics, but here he confronts the idea that he, along with everybody else, has been deserted.
It’s this rejection of God in a time when many would turn to the concept as a source of comfort, which earmarks Skeleton Tree as a work that refuses to try and find an easy way out or even a fleeting sense of healing. It crashes head-on into the grief and seems to deal with the consequences in real-time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iGxoJnygW8
Rings of Saturn follows on from the lead track and is, initially at least, upbeat. Synths pulse around a static that is pierced by drum hits and Cave’s acrobatic wordplay.
“I thought slavery had been abolished, how come it’s gone and reared its ugly head again?” he questions in a moment of clarity.
It proves to be a brutal piece of imagery where you’re transported into a mind that has been captured by tragedy. There is no real sense to be found there, just a brain that knows it is now unfortunately a slave to circumstance.
The double hit of Girl in Amber and Magneto may then be the closest a listener will ever, and can ever, get to Cave. His barely there whisper looms over the muted instrumentation on the former, while it crackles with vulnerability during the latter.
Within Girl in Amber there is self-reference in the form of his band The Bad Seeds forming in 1984. But while the “song continues to spin,” as he puts it, he finds no comfort in them like he once did. Instead, his thoughts drift to the telephone that is shudderingly quiet and lying dormant in his house.
“I used to think that when you died you kind of wandered the world, In a slumber until you crumbled, were absorbed into the earth, Well I don’t think that anymore,” Cave reasons out loud. Once again the preconceptions with death dominate his thinking, while a bed of soft backing vocals carry him off towards the conclusion.
Meanwhile, Magneto throbs with an intensity that is hard to muster from an almost spoken word track. Yet it is in the lyrics once again where this is sourced from. They are abstract enough to hide and keep little secrets here and there. But then in brief flashes, Cave reveals himself like never before.
It is sometimes difficult to decipher which of these songs were written before his son’s death. But in the case of Magneto, there can be no doubt. A soft pitter patter and lonely piano chords ring out through the haze as the mechanism for coping with grief persistently eludes Cave.
“The urge to kill somebody was basically overwhelming,” he says with an unguarded honesty.
“I had such hard blues down there in the supermarket queues,” he follows up with.
This projection of trying to return to some sort of normality is especially powerful. The use of “down there” giving off the sense that a significant amount of time had passed before the feeling of venturing back out into the world grasped. And yet even when it did there was no sense of reprieve from the sadness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JfDU2Vj6k0
The bubbling Anthrocene then enters along with a persistent clatter of snare hits. “All the things we love, we love, we love, we lose,” Cave sings over swelling instrumentation and a harmony of voices.
The second track released from the album then arrives in the form of I Need You. Cave’s vocals are particularly fragile here, as he is backed by just a steady synth line and withdrawn drums. Its stripped back nature allowing it to wander along harrowingly in rumination.
“Just breathe, just breathe, I need you,” Cave barely manages to sputter out.
The final title track emits some sort of light out from beneath the bleakness. But even this is shallow and noticeable in its sparsity.
The assertion that “nothing is for free” bites through perhaps the most instrumentally fleshed out track on the album. There is the sombre strum of acoustic guitar, a piano line that provides the backbone, and a restrained drum groove.
“And it’s alright now” Cave sings, unconvincingly, as his final lines for the album, with the band disappearing along with him. It’s not alright but you get the sense that Cave needs to say it out loud just so he can believe that it will get better eventually.
Skeleton Tree is undoubtedly an album unlike anything else you’ll hear this year, perhaps even ever. On his previous record he implored himself to “push the sky away,” but on this one he is resigned to the fact that the sky is pressed up against him. It’s a difficult album to listen to in most settings; it is precisely, definitively grounded in a deeply personal, deeply specific context.
The depth of sadness within it can be suffocating at times. It is like deep diving right down to the bottom of the ocean, without even the aide of an oxygen tank.
The submersion is not something you can actively enjoy, yet the rawness and beauty in it is something to be admired. It is tormented, anguished, and heart-broken all at once. And it seems as close as anybody is ever going to get to convey those emotions so honestly on record.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAMZYpZi_M4
Skeleton Tree is out now via Bad Seed Ltd.
Image: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
In anticipation of Nick Cave’s new album, Skelton Tree, being released this Friday September 9, we look back at his ninth solo album, Murder Ballads, which turned 20 years old this year. To commemorate the anniversary we delve into the bloodthirsty record where death lurks around every corner and murder is the language everybody speaks in…
Murder ballads were first noted in 17th century Europe, when the lower class sections of society used to indulge in their tales of murder and deception. Tom Waits described them as “just a cut above graffiti,” as they documented killings in stark and gruesome detail purely for entertainment purposes. They were seen as nothing more than “the oral tabloids of the day,” as Waits then succinctly put it.
Murder ballads were nothing new in music when Cave reconvened his band, The Bad Seeds, back in 1996. But when they hit the studio to record the songs, which he had been writing ever since the Let Love In sessions two years prior, they stumbled upon a winning formula.
“I really didn’t want to have anything more to do with examining my own misfortunes,” Cave revealed about the initial thought processes around the album.
In place of the yearning and romantic overtures which were laced throughout its predecessor, Murder Ballads proved to be a more hard boiled affair that revelled in the historical narratives of bloodthirsty ballads.
The album opens with the haunting accompaniment of piano along with a narrator as he retells the story of a man whose wife and three children were brutally murdered. Song of Joy proves to be an eerie opening as the tension is built up slowly, while a “hungry kitchen knife” threatens to kill Hilda, Haddy and Holly at any time.
“They never caught the man, he’s still on the loose,” the narrator warns the man whose door he has knocked upon in the first place. His foot edges up on the step while the moon hangs above and various creatures lurk behind them where the light can’t reach. There’s a final reference to a “red right hand” before the narrator seems to morph into the murderer with each and every line that follows, as he tries to force his way inside upon the conclusion.
The slinking Stagger Lee then enters into the picture holding a deck of cards and with his trusty Colt .45 strapped to his hip. He lurches towards a bar suitably called “The Bucket of Blood” and immediately starts to get into a fight with the bartender. The standoff inevitably ending with Lee shooting him dead.
Prostitutes and gunslingers all linger around on the peripheries of the story, while the stale stench of ale hangs in the air. But it is a woman who catches the killer’s attention above all else – Nellie Brown. “She saw the barkeep and said ‘oh god he can’t be dead.’ Stag said ‘well just count the holes in the motherfucker’s head.’” Perhaps the most unique pick-up line used in a bar anywhere, ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbe5RERDh4k
PJ Harvey, Cave’s then-girlfriend, then takes over as she uses a pen knife to murder the title character in Henry Lee. “Come take him by his lily white hands, come take him by his feet, and throw him in this deep, deep well that’s more than one hundred feet,” she sings with an unnerving calmness as she disposes of the body. However, it is Cave’s duet with another female artist, Kylie Minogue, that stole the show on Murder Ballads.
The spellbinding Where The Wild Roses Grow sees Cave and Minogue exchange verses as two lovers engage in a flirtation that, of course, eventually ends in murder. Inspired by the 19th century traditional song The Willow Garden, Cave lured Minogue to duet on it with him, somewhat mirroring the killer and victim dynamic that is present within the song.
The single, backed with beautiful sweeping strings, helped earn Cave an MTV nomination for “Best Male Artist” while it also broke the Top Ten in a number of charts around Europe. Somewhat strangely, Murder Ballads even became the band’s most successful album to date on the back of the song’s popularity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDpnjE1LUvE
After Minogue’s exit the listener is then introduced to the small town of Millhaven and a young girl known as Loretta, who prefers to go by the name of Lottie. The town is gripped by a curse whereby residents seemingly just keep on meeting severely unfortunate endings.
Backed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Cave depicts the sweet little Lottie as she lays out all the gruesome deaths with disparaging detail. The galloping drums and drunken sing-along style chorus working perfectly with the deranged ramblings of Lottie, as it’s soon revealed she is in fact the mass-murderer that is terrifying the town.
“I’ve got a pretty little mouth underneath all the foaming,” she assures us as the confessions come thick and fast. Yet despite all the murders it is her wild lack of remorse and thorough enjoyment of “Rorschach and Prozac” that makes her an oddly enjoyable character.
“I woke up one morning hungover at a hotel swimming pool in Germany. There was a party going on — a bunch of holidaymakers doing whatever those sorts of people do. But doing it very noisily. I didn’t really have the energy to be able to get up off the banana lounge and find my room. So instead I wrote a song and gave the holidaymakers names and described them and, well, executed them on the page,” Cave said about the beginnings of the album’s undoubted centrepiece O’Malley’s Bar.
The scene: a tall, thin man enters into the bar with a hankering for a drink. He is well known around the parts as people sit at their tables barely raising a curious eye at him. The bartender pours him a drink from off the back shelf, which is when he decides it is time to reach into his jacket and pull out his gun. With one quick shot he brings his victim crashing down into a pool of his own blood. Utter carnage then follows in the gruesome next 12 minutes as the killer casually strolls through the bar picking off his neighbourhood victims at will.
The sprawling bloodbath is written like a kind of screenplay rather than a song. The narrative arc weaving around a loathsome self-obsessed coward who murders simply because he can. The images are all piled on top of each other like snapshots of a crime scene. However, it is the little details within these images that really elevates the song and the narrative. “Her head landed in the sink with all the dirty dishes” and “with an ashtray big as a fucking really big brick, I split his skull in half” are lines of such gruesome yet ridiculous detail that you can’t help but find them funny.
“I think the reason it is funny is because it is gruesome,” Cave told Rolling Stone back when the album was released. “It is so relentlessly gruesome that it can’t be taken seriously.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTSpvCV34Ok
The album ends with a Bob Dylan cover of Death Is Not The End which is as odd as it sounds on an album that is rife with murder, torture, rape and adultery up until that point. The legendary bar room lizard himself, Shane McGowan, even stops by to contribute a verse. While Minogue and Harvey are amongst some others who all join in for one last hurrah.
The body count is staggering and the lyrics explicit throughout on Murder Ballads but what it does so well is reflect people’s curiosity with the darker parts of humanity. While it is so over the top it becomes cartoonish in its violence at times, twenty years on it still packs a considerable punch.
It is narratively and conceptually heavy and requires a certain kind of stomach and concentration to withstand its barrages, but if you can then the submersion into the album can be a thoroughly rewarding one. From the windswept Lovely Creature to the deep bass crawl of Crow Jane and the broken dreams of The Kindness of Strangers, the album still stands as a stark reminder of just how deranged and gruesome the world can be.
Image: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
This week marks the 20th year anniversary of Oasis’ legendary shows at Knebworth, which confirmed their status as the quintessential rock band of the mid 1990s in Britain. The massive gigs, played across two consecutive nights, came just two years after their debut Definitely Maybe had catapulted them into the public eye. Playing to over 250,000 people, the shows were a mass celebration of Britpop in its pomp as fans flocked to see the band that, in many ways, came to define an entire generation. With the release of live track My Big Mouth to mark the anniversary, we look back at the legendary event and assess what it meant for British music at the time.
Located just over 30 kilometres from the centre of London, Knebworth proved to be a popular choice of venue amongst rock and roll bands after its owner, Lord David Cobbald, first agreed to let The Allman Brothers play there in 1974. However, the fact that a “sleepy, 300-acre park, featuring the grandiose house which dates back to 1490, turned into a riotous music mecca” is certainly an interesting one.
After The Allman Brothers first played a show in the grounds, numerous others soon followed. Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart all played there in the early years, as the crowd numbers steadily began to swell. Rolling Stones, Queen and Led Zeppelin added their names to the extensive list too. But impressively it was Oasis’ shows that created one of the largest legends.
“Anyone who was 16 or 17 at that time- that was a gig you had to be at. I really think it was just as significant as Woodstock was for the Americans in 1969,” promoter Conal Dodds told NME a decade on from the event.
“When I signed Oasis to Creation, I thought they were going to be big. But I’d be lying if I said I thought they would get that big,” Creation Records founder Allan McGee said. “I think we should’ve just stopped after Knebworth.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxcfcuUcBHw
The event drew a huge audience but the whole story surrounding the weekend also added extra elements of intrigue. Just how had two working class brothers and their band from Manchester come to dominate the music industry in the space of two short years?
Noel Gallagher, songwriter, guitarist, singer and now part-time skateboard enthusiast, tapped into a common feeling amongst the youth in Britain at the time. The band’s debut album, which he wrote the lyrics for entirely by himself, reflected a desire to escape out of the places and circumstances he had been born into. It was a thought that was prevalent in Britain at the time as the restrictive government, severe lack of jobs, and the general growing pains of shifting out of adolescence and into adulthood weighed heavily.
“In my mind my dreams are real” younger brother Liam Gallagher sang on the opening track Rock And Roll Star. It was a song which was suitably full of grandiose visions of the future. This breaking out of the monotony and the familiar tales of living for the weekend (Cigarettes and Alcohol) resonated strongly with a widespread fan base, who were all experiencing the same thoughts and feelings.
Oasis ascended to the upper echelon of bands in Britain after their follow up, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? tapped into this zeitgeist too. Their Knebworth appearances proving to be the confirmation of their meteoric rise, as it completed their transformation from likely lads to fully fledged superstars.
The Irish Examiner reported that a staggering 2.6 million people applied for tickets to the shows in 1996. That was the largest demand for concert tickets in British history. They subsequently deemed it the “crowning glory of the Britpop era.”
The band members themselves had picked the bands that would feature on the eclectic bill. A Beatles tribute band opened proceedings in the early afternoon, while The Charlatans, Manic Street Preachers, The Chemical Brothers and Prodigy were also among those that appeared.
“Noel was the only one into us at the time though,” Liam Howlett from the Prodigy recalled. “All the Oasis boys had a Portakabin each. I remember Liam popping his head out of his as we came offstage shouting, ‘What the fuck was all that noise? Turn the fucking bass down!’ Knebworth was just so beautiful though. It was like a big fucking rave. There were loads of people were on E’s everywhere. It was an event never to be repeated. It was a moment in time.”
A sense of freedom and excess was epitomised not only out in the crowd but backstage too. “I used to work for a catering company based at Knebworth farms and I had to work at the VIP bar backstage,” Alex Vooght said. “It was pretty exclusive. There were sofas made out of Levi jeans, pinball machines and a massive Scalextric set.”
“When I got there the first thing I saw was Mick Hucknall trying to chat up Martine McCutcheon,” Pulp front man Jarvis Cocker added.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP1-S-_ASBk
When the band strolled onstage the enormity of the occasion didn’t escape Noel Gallagher. “This is history right here,” he told the crowd. They then launched head on into their debut album track Columbia. The custom built stage housed the band while an incredible 11 sound towers were dotted all around the site. “Liam wanted his vocals blisteringly loud,” sound engineer Rick Pope told Sound on Sound.
Oasis played a set list packed with hits, despite only being drawn from their just two-album long career at that point. Supersonic, Side Away, Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back In Anger and Live Forever were all aired, while there was also time to bring the set to a close with a cover of The Beatles and a John Squires guest appearance, along with a concluding firework display.
“Knebworth wasn’t designed to be a historic event- it was just what people made of it,” the band’s manager Marcus Russell later revealed to NME.
Oasis would go on to release a string of albums and tour while often dubbed, either by themselves or members of the press, as the biggest band in the world. But to many the two nights they performed in Hertfordshire remains a high-water mark both for the band but also for British music.
“Knebworth was a cultural shift,” Derek Robinson stated.
“The UK was in the doldrums in the early Nineties. Oasis, and Knebworth, were instrumental in kick-starting the cultural revolution that led to the Young British Artists, Trainspotting, an explosion in literature and art, Cool Britannia 1997, and the regeneration of huge parts of London and the UK by a youth that were suddenly energised.”
Robbie Williams, former Take That member and “dancer in a boy band”, as McGee once called him, went on to sell out three nights at Knebworth. But Oasis’ two show run in August 1996 still stands as the pinnacle act at the historic site, and an integral moment in British music history.
For the band’s part, guitarist Bonehead still remembers the weekend fondly and described it as something he will “never forget”. Liam Gallagher was unaware there would be two shows and got so drunk after the first night that he barely remembered the second. While, unsurprisingly, Noel Gallagher provided the greatest moment of insight. “It felt that everything was leading up to something that was going to define not only the size of the band, but what British pop music was at that time. It all felt like it was leading to Knebworth.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqbPBWQNkzM
Image: Irish Examiner
With the announcement of Peter Hook’s new 768-page book Substance: Inside New Order, which will chart the career of his legendary band New Order, we take the opportunity to look back at a time when they owned the infamous Hacienda nightclub that was right at the centre of the ‘Madchester’ scene…
Manchester is an industrial city, in the north of England, which built itself up out of barren wastelands. It became a prime manufacturer of vehicles, chemicals, heavy machinery and textiles before European competition and World War II brought it crumbling back down to its knees. What was once barren wasteland became so once more, as previously thriving factories, warehouses and businesses all shut down in a great mass of de-industrialisation.
The Margaret Thatcher-era only went to further compound this problem as Eric Scholler pointed out in his article Saturday Night at the Hacienda. “The combination of more factory closings and deep cuts in social spending left the city reeling. By April of 1982, its unemployment rate was at 32 percent.”
Manchester had become a neglected city, as abandoned factories became the norm. Great rows of small red-bricked houses were left vacated while there were smashed out windows at every turn and boarded up establishments became blank canvasses for graffiti.
However, music in England had always acted as an escape route for its people. It offered a way out of those dark and repressed cities for the artists, while it also provided comfort or excitement for those who were left behind. It was witnessed with the Beatles two decades earlier, then again in the 1970s with the punk rock movement.
The Sex Pistols incendiary gigs in Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall are the stuff of legend now and back then it certainly had an inspiring effect on some of the city’s youth. Tony Wilson, a local broadcaster, was supposedly at one of the Sex Pistol’s two gigs in June 1976. As the story goes, the experience pushed him into later forming his own independent record company.
It was named Factory Records and its popularity grew over the resulting years and spawned massive local bands such as Joy Division and New Order. These bands in turn then allowed Wilson and Factory Records to, “assume the kind of role in Manchester that Motown once played in Detroit.” Along with the records released on the label, perhaps the greatest influence Factory Records had on Manchester was its involvement with the infamous nightclub The Hacienda. Hook, bassist for Joy Division and New Order, recently described why the band joined forces with Factory Records and decided to purchase the warehouse in the first place.
“The club came into being because we had nowhere to go in our own city. Our manager had this idea that people like us should have somewhere where it was safe for us to do our own thing,” he said.
The nightclub then can be seen as a product of a disenfranchised youth culture. A viable and liberating escape route out of the oppression and misery that had consumed the city over the years.
New Order had been greatly influenced during their time touring by nightclubs in New York. They enlisted the help of designer Ben Kelly when they got back home, who immediately set about creating the nightclub they envisioned. The large dance floor was surrounded by parking meter bollards, while yellow and black poles were situated right in the middle of it. There were also windows – 12 of them to be exact. There were barely any toilets or sound systems to speak of though. But that didn’t matter. The Hacienda opened in May of 1982 and went on to be largely overlooked and underused for close to five years. During this time it racked up ridiculous debts and put huge financial strain on both the band and Factory Records in the process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYH8DsU2WCk
There are varying accounts about when The Hacienda and its accompanying movement first began. Shaun Ryder of the Happy Mondays declared, “The summer of 1987 is when things really changed.” However, Sarah Champion, a former NME writer, remembered how a Stone Roses gig seemed to be the start of a massive change in Manchester. “I think ‘Madchester’ was born the night the Stone Roses played a benefit gig at International 2 in May 1988. Something was in the water that month. Acid house had hit The Haçienda,” she said.
While the exact point in time that it all began is debatable, what is beyond doubt is its power and meaning once it all kicked off. There were suddenly massive influxes of people as they all came to be a part of a new scene later labelled ‘Madchester’. “Something big was happening. We really felt that we were the centre of the universe,” Champion continued.
A new genre of music, acid house, began to dominate in the club’s. The Hacienda was often leading the way on this front in England. It seemed the great big empty warehouse had been biding its time all along, waiting for the right music and the right scene to fill it up.
Acid house originated out of the Chicago house scene in the mid 1980’s. It was signified by its deep basslines and use of the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer, which gave it its distinctive ‘squelchy’ sound. Disco music had long since been derided by the youth, but it was this electronic offshoot that soundtracked their collective clubbing years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCUPc9zVfyo
At this time the relatively unknown drug ecstasy also began to infiltrate itself into nightclubs. In fact, it did so to such an extent that acid house music and ecstasy are still inextricably linked all these years later.
“The drug was sometimes described as a ‘psychedelic amphetamine.’ It provided a speedy, dreamy sense of empathy and well-being, without the hallucinations. Ecstasy and acid-house arrived in England at the same moment, and their popularity grew symbiotically,” Scholler wrote.
Dave Haslam, resident Mancunian DJ during the meteoric rise of The Hacienda, described the scene as a, “chaotic, accidental, spontaneous burst of madness. A real adventure.”
The “adventure” lasted for years as people descended on the city of Manchester to be a part of this mass cultural event. Drug use was rife but the sense that things were changing, after the oppressive control exerted by the conservative government, could not be denied. “No one controlled it though, which meant that gangsters and corporate cowboys saw an opportunity,” Haslam admitted.
The scene bore witness to a second “summer of love” and countless nights to remember. But as its popularity grew, so too did the crime rates. Stories of rival gangs shooting it out for control over the club were splashed all over the press and eventually it became so synonymous with crime that many people simply stopped going. The initial idealism, excitement and optimism had descended under a dark cloud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeoqKWQ3JII
The Stone Roses gig at Spike Island is often considered as the pinnacle of the era. The tip of the mountain where the only way to go after it was down. Eventually, they folded, as did The Hacienda in 1997.
There is now a misconception though that ‘Madchester’ was simply the result of a crossover between indie rock and dance music, along with the introduction of ecstasy; however, the truth is a little different to that.
“‘Madchester’ was more of a phrase than a phase for me. A phrase that flowed out of Factory Records. It was a somewhat cynical attempt to market The Haçienda and Happy Mondays,” broadcaster Terry Chrisitan noted.
Indeed, the ‘Madchester’ scene now tends to get stereotyped as one massive drug-fuelled party that ended in a fit of violence, but there was something more to it before it all fell away. For a brief moment in time during the early days, when New Order and The Stone Roses graced the stage and “one love” reigned, it felt like anything was possible. There was a decisiveness to the way people acted suddenly.
Andy Barker from local band 808 State remembered this when he said, “There was an amazing creative energy in Manchester at the time. People just invented their own jobs. There was DJ’s, graphic designers and clothes labels. Everyone decided to just have a go. And for once there was no one telling you that you couldn’t. ‘I’m gonna open a car wash.’ ‘Nice one, go for it, mate.’”
As a BBC report recently stated, “Manchester’s Hacienda nightclub has gone down in history as the epicentre of ecstatic youth culture in the 80s and 90s.” But what became of the city once bands like The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays broke up and the afterglow of the rush dimmed?
The lasting impact of those few summers can actually still be felt almost 30 years later. Classic albums such as Primal Scream’s Screamadelica came directly out of the scene, along with a renewed sense of optimism that remained around Manchester. Journalist Miranda Sawyer declared last year that, “the reputation that ‘Madchester’ gave Manchester – that of a joyful, creative, sociable place of opportunity – has never left the city.”
The Hacienda may no longer be there and lots of people may have moved on, but the memory of a moment in time when Manchester was right at the centre of the entire world has evidently never been forgotten.
Image: Peter J Walsh
There’s a large chandelier covered in Swarovski crystals that hangs above. Ordinarily, it would act as the centre piece in any other room. But this is not just any other room. The chandelier hangs from the high ceiling in the bar, but as you look around there is also a stone fire place. There is a large row of custom-made brown leather settees, a flight of marble stairs that lead up beyond the first floor. Scantily clad women dance all through the night in the thick windowsills of the Soho Rooms. In between their hypnotic movements you can peer outside into the street, as people regularly climb out of Lamborghinis, Porsches and Ferraris. Looking down at their ludicrously expensive watches, they probably wouldn’t notice you. Among this Moscow community, money speaks in a language most of us have never and will never speak.
It has been widely reported that Moscow has the greatest nightlife in the world. But it wasn’t always that way. In 1991 Russia actually had no nightclubs at all; no extravagant clubs, no $15,000 VIP tables, and no after parties on Joseph Stalin’s boat The Maxim Gorky, where endless supplies of Cristal and beautiful women existed. And there was certainly very little hints of all that which would later arrive in the form of the “New Russians”.
The Soviet Union disbanded at the end of 1991 and it would effectively usher in a new era in Russia, and especially in its capital. People were suddenly able to enjoy freedom’s they hadn’t previously been afforded. In ‘Gagarin and the Rave Kids’ it states, “The emergence of the nightclub subculture has been one of the most noteworthy changes in Russian youth culture in the first post-Soviet decade.” After decades and decades of being controlled, Russians openly welcomed the opportunity to craft new identities for themselves. However, the changes can’t necessarily be solely attributed to the Soviet Union’s decline. Alterations in behaviour and ideology were already occurring in the youth years prior to it.
The first signs of a thriving late night music scene in Russia was when the art community began to purchase abandoned buildings in the late 1980’s. They redesigned them and began hosting all-night parties for themselves and their friends. At this early juncture, the buildings were no longer controlled by the state and it started an underground movement for the disenfranchised youth. “It wasn’t controlled by the Soviet collective… This was only possible between the late 80’s and early 90’s. During this window, the old institutional relations of power had been almost completely suspended but new ones had not yet replaced them.”
The Gagarin Party, held in December 1991, was the city’s first legitimate club party for many. It was attended by hundreds of people from St Petersburg, and thousands of people from the Moscow art scene. The annual Gagarin Party quickly began to gain traction, as organised music events started to crop up with increasing frequency around Russia. “The Gagarin Party was the first legendary rave that activists from the Northern City, Ivan Salmaksov, Eugeny Birman and the Haas brothers organised. These parties were the pioneers of club history in Moscow,” Passport Magazine reported.
Elena Krivovyaz pointed out in The Golden Age of Nightlife in Moscow, “the development of nightclubs in the mid-1990s was a true revolution in Russia. The clubs were not only places to be entertained, they were the centres of new lifestyles.” With Russia’s economy surging thanks to rising oil prices, an upper class was expanded upon. This newfound wealth triggered the rise of the so called “New Russians” as they revelled in the excess. “Interiors became fairly salubrious. Rich and bohemian club-goers visited the clubs and then boasted about their experiences. Clubbers essentially became a kind of elite community.”
In 1993 the legendary Alexei Gorobiy set up one of Moscow’s first nightclubs, Penthouse. It was clear that the capital craved elegant excess. The ensuing onslaught of clubs (Titanic, Jazz Café, Zeppelin and First) clearly played on this. But Gorobiy and his associates recognised and capitalised on this better than anyone else. He catered to the appetites and contributed to the constantly changing landscape of clubs that opened and closed all within the space of a few months. Gorobiy alone creating Shambala, Zima, Leto and Osen within three short years. Seemingly, the trick in Moscow became to appeal to the widespread sense of debauchery, while also closing down before anyone could become bored. “We knew the date of our death,” Gorobiy said in Brett Forrest’s Vanity Fair article from 2006. “Everything operated on a tight schedule. The closing-night invitations were printed up the evening each club opened.”
This type of spending both by businesses and consumers never appeared sustainable though. “As the economy reformed the aggregate income of Russia’s wealthiest 10 percent increased by 50 percent,” Forrest wrote. “Those benefiting from the second-largest oil exports in the world were concentrated in the Russian capital…Yet the richest three dozen people in Russia had a net worth of nearly a quarter of the country’s G.D.P.”
While the upper class was happy to indulge, a new generation of youths later came into the club scene and were unimpressed by what they saw. No longer new or exciting, the scene didn’t appeal to them like it had their predecessors, who had grown up under the control of the Soviet Union. In Beg, Steal, or Borrow: New Beats From Moscow Finn Cohen stated, “There is now a unique generation of Russians who were born during the Soviet Union. They were teenagers during the turbulent 90’s when the country buckled under the weight of capitalism ingested too quickly.”
The elite society of the Moscow clubbers still continues, but it is no longer the defining image of the Russian scene. “The club scene doesn’t represent the posh Moscow of high heels and pink Bentleys. It’s a growing alternative to commercialisation and oil-industry standards of living,” Philipp Gorbachev observed for Electronic Beats.
Hard bass initially captured the imagination of Russian youths, as they sought a different type of music to listen to, dance to, and to call their own. It originated in St Petersburg after the dawn of the millennium. “At some point in late 2010 hard bass slipped under the digital Iron Curtain. It then made its way onto YouTube, pump dancing into the collective global consciousness,” Aleks Eror wrote in Noisey. The next years spawned numerous imitations as hard bass fans appeared all over YouTube from places as far reaching as Slovakia, France and Chile.
https://youtu.be/vOP1iAzWhkk
By then though Russian music had already moved onto its next big thing. The youth of the day continuing to push towards creating their own individual identities and scenes. These new raves were often hosted in places other than nightclubs though; theatres, museums and outdoor areas becoming the favourites. The media described this new post-Soviet generation as modniki (trendy people) or reivery (ravers). For a city that previously shunned the underground, it was interesting to note its continued rise in the shadows of youth club culture.
In 2009, “Witch House” was created and found its adopted home in Moscow. “Why is it so popular? Because it’s so dark and edgy, which goes so well with our reality,” electronic musician Evgenia Nedosekina said. “If you want to wear black and take part in a rave in some factory, witch house is the way to go.” VV17CHOU7, as the party was termed, quickly became hugely popular with youths. In fact, in 2014 it was the biggest new party in Russia. VV17CHOU7 saw everybody attending, “wearing black and sportswear… dancing to the dark sound of trance samples and deep pulsing bass.” It was a discernible step away from velvet jackets, table service, and Versace handbags.
However it didn’t stay like that for long in the constantly evolving Moscow. An off-shoot called “Skotoboinya” (Slaughterhouse) was quickly created and prospered, and a late-night club scene quickly began to evolve (or re-evolve) around it. As Cohen hilariously pointed out, during the days of the “New Russians” the music on the dance floor was invariably the “generic ‘ntsk-ntsk-ntsk’ of Euro disco. The kind that always features a woman soulfully crooning some phrase that sounds inspirational in the context of strobe lights and cocaine.”
Now though, Moscow has had plenty of time to adjust to that glamorous blend of excess, money and music. While it was attempting to break free from control upon the first decade of the Soviets Union’s collapse, enough time has passed that the scene is finding its feet, among an exciting, less fiscally exclusive environment. Music is at the forefront as the club scene in Moscow continues to evolve away from just fancy and expensive clubs catering to the rich. “A new community in Moscow has been marinating itself in a diverse brew of hip-hop, punk, dubstep, rave, Russian pop, video games and vintage Soviet film soundtracks,” Cohen noted. This integration can surely only bode well for the future of Russian youth’s, music and club culture.
But what has grown out from under the collapse of the Soviet Union in just 25 years is astounding. There have been a number of transformations during that near three decade spell. The barren emptiness of the late 80’s was firstly replaced with the early dawning of club culture. What then grew from the art scene was a lavish display of wealth in the form of grandiose nightclubs and extravagant parties. But as money continues to flow into the hands of a select few, a more causal and eclectic scene has been created. In the ever changing metropolis of Moscow, what might come next is anyone’s guess.
Image: Dazed Digital
Fresh from his appearance at Splendour in the Grass, Jake Bugg arrived in Perth on Friday night to play one of his three sideshows while on our shores. At just 22 years old, the Nottingham native has already got three albums to his name, worked with super producer Rick Rubin, and has already built up a large and dedicated following. Coinciding with the release of his third album entitled On My One, the stage at Metro City was well and truly set for Bugg to show exactly why he is viewed as such a bright talent.
Opening the show first though was the enigmatic Peter Bibby. Equipped with just his electric guitar, Bibby stood centre stage and controlled the early arriving crowd with a mixture of humour and songs about pills and Margaret River. His delivery is what could best be described as whiskey inflicted but it suits his image well as he sang with a large cowboy hat mostly obscuring his face. “If you’re offended by all the expletives, I’m fucking sorry” he joked before launching into Hates My Boozin’. His half an hour set punctuated by blazing guitar stabs, strained vocals, and witty one-liners taken from his debut album Butcher/ Hairstylist/ Beautician.
Bugg then strolled onstage as the paint splattered backdrop, taken from his latest album cover, was lit up behind him. His casual attire of black jeans, a black shirt and a pair of trainers fitting perfectly with his rather subdued walk up to his microphone. Bugg is not really known for his onstage presence, he mostly lets his music do the talking for him, so without much in the way of introduction he launched into the self-titled track off his third offering.
On My One was an interesting choice for an opener, as the dark and slow strum immediately brought down the crowd’s volume. The venue dropping to a silence as Bugg laid his personal troubles bare of being a successful musician while he feels like he has no one around him with which to share it. “Three years on the road, 400 shows, where do I call home, no place to go, where do I belong?” he sang while being almost as far away from his home as possible.
The brooding opener then led into the biggest hit of Bugg’s career so far, Two Fingers. The crowd instantly returning to their boisterous mood as soon as the opening guitar strums were heard. The chorus then brought a rousing sing along as the youthfully defiant track proved to still pack a hefty punch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9XwFecNXyU
A rip through another song, Seen It All, from his debut album kept the predominantly British crowd enthralled. The recounting of a story from his teenage years proving to be a particular highlight of the night. The tales of urban decay and moral corruption seem to undoubtedly be where Bugg is most comfortable and confident though. It allows him to paint pictures of streets that no one ever walks alone at night and sing stories about characters who are struggling to get anywhere in life. Messed Up Kids showcasing this best as Bugg documents about “Johnny” who “deals a bit of blow on the side, thinks that he’s invincible, hates a fight.”
The country twang of There’s A Beast And We All Feed It lifted the energy once again, before another crowd favourite in Slumvile Sunrise was aired. The track, taken from Bugg’s sophomore album Shangri La, kicked in with a dirty guitar riff and a rapid fire delivery of lyrics. It also offered a chance for Bugg to show off his incredibly impressive and underrated guitar skills as he pulled out an extended solo much to the crowd’s delight.
He then stepped out mostly on his own, equipped with just his acoustic guitar, to perform Me And You and a stunning version of Broken. His live vocals were put to the test but he hit the gut-wrenching high notes with impressive ease. “Have become all I lost and all I hoped for, but I must carry on, always one,” he crooned sorrowfully on a night which was in keeping with his latest album’s tales of isolation and loneliness.
After the sombre Broken, Bugg made sure to leave the crowd on an energetic high though. His near 90 minute set being brought to a close with the frenzied Lightning Bolt. The song which first saw him draw comparisons to the legendary Bob Dylan, Bugg ripped through it at a frantic pace as the whole crowd was swept up into one big wave. Then leaving the stage with a few shy waves and a mumbled goodbye, the crowd left happy knowing they had witnessed the full Jake Bugg experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4wTRbW0aos
Image: Telegraph
London duo Snakehips are back in Australia for a run of headline sideshows, while also appearing on the jam-packed Splendour in the Grass bill in Byron Bay. Since first meeting and deciding to collaborate almost five years ago, the much hyped producers, James Carter and Oliver Lee, have gone from strength to strength as they have continued to gain new fans with their blend of bright pop melodies and dusty R&B beats. With their newly released single Cruel, featuring Zayn, currently climbing up the charts and receiving airplay all over the place, their rise is showing no signs of slowing down yet. Arriving at Villa Nightclub on a windy and rainy Thursday night in Perth, expectations were naturally high.
Young producer MXXWLL aka Maxwell Bidstrup kicked off the night with his trademark funk style setting the mood perfectly. With his long hair and beanie loosely perched on top of his head, the producer was a frantic ball of energy as he danced along with the crowd to each track that blared out from the speakers at either side of him. Citing artists such as D’Angelo, Kaytranada, and Prince as his influences, the Sydney-based producer first gained attention when he released his debut single 4U last year, which won praise from Snoop Dogg and, of course, Snakehips themselves. Describing his sound as “future funk” the rich, laid back grooves of 4U and HONNE remix Gone are the Days had the people who had arrived early enough to catch his set dancing along happily.
The crowd continued to steadily build throughout MXXWLL’s feelgood set and as it began to reach capacity, Snakehips hit the stage to a blacked-out venue and sporadic applause. Swirling synths, a deep bassline and rattling percussion that begged you to clap along to it then filled the room, and after the anticipation had been cranked up high enough, Forever released everyone into a wild frenzy. The funky guitar and warm bass line impressively sweeping up the entire room in an instant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5H9_kEs-Fs
The duo began their career remixing tracks by the likes of the Weeknd and Banks, and it was clear from the outset that despite their own personal success they still love to do so, and a brutal Meek Mill remix of Monster was a particular highlight towards the beginning of the show. While that was then bravely followed up soon after with the breezy Days With You which coasted by like a lazy summer afternoon.
The band’s name flickered across the stage in playful bright blue light while two screens hung high above them and flipped and reversed their name at a dizzying rate. The visuals were in keeping with the show’s early momentum as Lee and Oliver eventually introduced themselves half way through their set. There was the odd fist bump and raised arm from Lee afterwards, while Carter’s focus was kept mainly on what he was playing.
Glasses were then all raised up towards the ceiling when the chest bursting bass of Dimelo was introduced into the mix. The Tory Lanez featuring track had the crowd playing along later too when the hook demanded “Put your hands up if you deserve it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE3a6E4Kg3c
The biggest cheer of the night though was reserved for when All My Friends was played towards the end. The distinctive opening of crooned hums and the old school R&B beat immediately piqued everyone’s interest in the room. It’s somewhat strange that a song which Lee described during an interview as being about having experienced “years of bad nights out” has come to soundtrack good night’s out for so many people over the last year. The Chance the Rapper and Tinashe featuring track has defied the odds and become a global hit even earning Snakehips an Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song and being certified platinum.
“We made the beat to the song last year and we really wanted Tinashe and Chance,” Lee recently told Official Charts. “We just sent them the song and they both said they liked it. We couldn’t believe that they’d even heard of us. I still can’t believe it all worked out actually. The whole thing is sort of ridiculous.”
Whether Lee or Carter can believe it all worked out or not, the song undoubtedly catapulted them into mainstream public attention. The results of which has seen them travel around playing world-renowned festivals such as Coachella and Glastonbury, while they’ve built their fan base. On the evidence of their set in Perth, it looks like this is only set to continue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3mrYxPLSH4
Image: The Fader
Josh Homme casually dropped the news recently that his band Queens of the Stone Age were set to return for their seventh album. Now, long-time bandmate and suit-wearing aficionado Troy Van Leeuwen has taken it a step further. Speaking on 2 Hours with Matt Pinfield, Leeuwen revealed that the band were “already talking about what we’re going to do. There’s tonnes of idea bouncing around… We’re going to do something before the end of the year, as far as recording goes.” So with the impending return of QOTSA confirmed we go back to the very beginning and chart how they became one of the greatest rock bands of their time.
Josh Homme started his career as the young guitarist in legendary desert rock outfit Kyuss. The quartet boasted heavy and sludgy rock that was purpose built for long nights spent out in the middle of nowhere with little more than generators and a small audience of likeminded individuals to keep them company. While they are now viewed as an influential band though, at the time they went largely ignored by the masses. Upon their split in 1995 an EP arrived a year later with the flipside featuring three songs from Homme. It garnered little to no reaction, but this would be the first anyone would hear of Queens of the Stone Age.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-AOPFRXebg
The self-titled debut was released in 1998, and was almost entirely devised from one man’s vision. The new project, which also featured ex-Kyuss member Alfredo Hernandez, was a melodic approach to heavy rock. It was softer at the core, purposely more accessible, and seemingly more at ease to let its guard down than Kyuss ever was. The music still had the same driving rhythms that were familiar and a hard boiled edge that had been cultivated from too much time spent out in the harsh desert sun, but beneath that exterior was an undeniable sense and love for melody. For Homme, the debut acted as much as a departure from Kyuss as it was an arrival for Queens of the Stone Age.
The robotic riffs, chugging bass, and single eyed vision from the debut was then expanded upon for 2000’s Rated R. The sophomore effort was the first real indicator of who the band would later become and how it would operate and evolve. A whole host of guests put their fingerprints on it, but it still remained uniquely Homme’s vision. It was undeniably a stylistically restless and highly ambitious album. Nick Oliveri came in on bass and general mad man duties, while Mark Lanegan performed vocals for the first time with the band. Yet it’s not these sort of details or additions that stick with you about the album. It’s more about the fact that they had the gall to open it with a song called Feel Good Hit of the Summer that just lists an albeit impressive mixture of drugs in the system over and over again. They used just about any instrument they could get their hands on; bongos and xylophones included. Oh, and they enlisted the help of Rob Halford on backing vocals for no other reason than that he was working in the studio next to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2mybZ3KT2E
Songs about teenage acid trips, hangovers and the failure to keep secrets were then left behind in the dust as a sprawling drive through the desert gave the band their mega-hit and a concept album that still stands as one of the greatest in music history. The idea was simple for Songs For the Deaf; Homme wanted to recreate the desert road trip soundtrack. Monstrous riffs, screams and dusty guitar lines were a feature, and that was just on the first track You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire. In between classics such as the impossibly catchy No One Knows and Go With The Flow were splices of jerk-off radio presenters who loved the sound of their own voices more than the music they intermittently played. But while proving to be annoying at times and humorous at others, they anchored the album into the truths of the long haul desert car journey; The constant twisting of the radio dial to try and find something good to listen to. The window wound down fully while the wind hits you like you’re holding a hairdryer right up to your face. The vast nothingness of the desert on the horizon. And how the sweat underneath your armpits has made the shirt you’re wearing stick to the skin like glue.
Dave Grohl was brought in to play drums in the ever rotating fixture of the band. Mark Lanegan was made a full-fledged member and Nick Oliveri provided the Ying to Homme’s more refined and poised Yang. It was arguably the greatest line-up QOTSA ever had. It is arguably the greatest album the band has ever made. But that is part of what makes QOTSA so great, you could reasonably argue for just about every album they’ve made as being the best and not be wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s88r_q7oufE
After the brutal high point of Songs For The Deaf, Grohl returned to his day job with the Foo Fighters, Lanegan stopped being around as much, and Oliveri was kicked out of the band entirely. Fans worried about what Homme would be able to provide amongst all the upheaval, but what he gave them was a dark and twisted album. Lullabies To Paralyse had very little of the muscular swagger that the record preceding it had. Instead of trying to replicate it, QOTSA went in another direction entirely. Whereas the insane screams of Oliveri opened the last album, Lanegan opened this one with a lovesick lullaby. The difference couldn’t have been more marked. It was a brave move and was one that was backed by the first appearances of long-time members Joey Castillo on drums and guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen.
Along with Homme, the trio formed the core musicians for the album and, as was now the calling card for the band, a whole host of others came in and added their own touches. Long-time friends and collaborators like Alain Johannes, Chris Goss, Dave Catching, Jesse Hughes and Homme’s now-wife Brody Dalle all appeared on the album to varying degrees, while ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons played on stand out track Burn the Witch. It didn’t receive quite as much fanfare and critical praise as Songs For The Deaf and was seen as a massive departure by many, but Homme was happy with it. It was the most personal record he had made so far in his career and had by all accounts been a pleasure to make.
“To me, it’s not necessarily sad, it’s just dark. When the album starts, it’s already night time. And halfway through it goes past midnight. For me, I like to write about things that are dark or twisted. Where the poetry seems to be is when you start in the dark and reach for the light,” he told Pitchfork at the time of the album’s release.
The fifth album Era Vulgaris followed two years later and featured yet more line-up changes. Current members Dean Fertita and Michael Shuman were drafted in alongside the usual cast. The talk of guest appearances was overwhelming as usual, with Julian Casablancas, Billy Gibbons, Trent Reznor and Mark Lanegan all rumoured to appear. However, not all of these came to fruition on the album as Homme again sought to redesign his band’s sound. Throughout his career he had always sought to defy expectations and flip them back on themselves, but here he returned in a way to his old sound of robotic riffs. The softer and richer guitar sound was replaced with jarring and spiky stabs (the smooth blues of Make It Witchu being a notable exception) along with the new heavy influence of electronic music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LT_kDj4Xzo
It would be another six years until QOTSA released their next, and currently, most recent album. Their sixth arrived with similar stories like all the other albums. There were returning members- Dave Grohl on drums for a few tracks and Nick Oliveri, departures- Joey Castillo, new arrivals like John Theodore, a whole host of guest stars including Sir Elton John, Reznor, and Alex Turner from Arctic Monkeys, and anticipation for where Homme would take himself and his band next. However, …Like Clockwork wasn’t like any of the other albums.
“[Matador founder] Chris Lombardi told me that this is Act Two of Queens of the Stone Age and I agree with that. Act Two just happened to start with me waking up in a hospital,” Homme told Spin in 2013. For so many years he and his band had seemed indestructible, but in between albums Homme found out that he was not.
…Like Clockwork was forged after Homme “died” on the operating table after a routine surgery went wrong and he had to be brought back to life. The vulnerability stemming from this traumatic experience is heard throughout the record. On The Vamypre of Time and Memory Homme is accompanied by just his piano as he sings, “I want God to come and take me home ‘cos I’m all alone.” In I Appear Missing, he addresses his past mistakes in life with unnerving clarity as he comes around from his near death experience. “Pieces were stolen from me, dare I say given away.” It was a version of Homme that no one had encountered before. Introspective, fragile and confused are not words that you would have attributed to QOTSA at any other time during their career, yet on their sixth album it fit them perfectly.
“One thing that is clear, it’s all downhill from here,” Homme sings with his fading falsetto on the final track of the album. On a deeply personal record that addressed a man who was lost in the world that he thought he had in the palm of his hand, it can be seen as a dark summation of his situation. But Homme always talked about reaching around in the dark for the light. And while he did, he managed to find it, and shone the spotlight on himself in a way that he never had before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEIVlYegHx8
What’s to come next for the band is anyone’s guess. As of yet, there’s been no official announcements, or even rumours about direction, guests and the like. Much like how their last album was influenced by Homme’s near death experience, it’s possible that their forthcoming record will similarly hone in on the emotional consequences of more recent events – most notably, the terrorist attack in Paris last year, which saw dozens killed at a concert of Hughes and Homme’s other band, Eagles of Death Metal.
Whatever may be on the horizon for Homme and co, we’re so excited that they’re back, and we can’t wait to hear it.
Image: Brantley Gutierrez
Father John Misty, Andre 3000 and Lizzo will make guest appearances on a new Adult Swim cartoon. Brad Neely’s Harg Nallin’ Sclopio Peepio stars Ilana Glazer (Broad City) and Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) amongst many others in its regular cast.
The musicians are set to appear in their own individual episodes, where they will also perform songs. Show creator, Brad Neely, has written all of them for the cartoon, which has been described as a, “quarter-hour animated sketch show. It will feature a collection of frenetic one-off bits, shorts, and songs all filtered through Neely’s signature visual style.”
Speaking to AWN about what to expect from the show Neely said, “They should expect endless variety. Lots and lots of little bits crammed in. And lots of music.”
“I wrote around 100 songs. About 60 or 70 made it into the 10 episodes. Music is a huge part of the show. This was an opportunity for me to make a lot of music and have fun people sing my songs.”
The cartoon will be Neely’s second show for Adult Swim, with his previous one being China, IL. During the same interview the creator went on to explain the reasons behind the highly unusual name for his second project.
“It’s intentionally meaningless. We tried some titles that had meaning, but this one just made us laugh.”
Hip hop artist Lizzo also talked about her role in the show when she said that she was, “really excited about being a cartoon. This won’t be the last time I do it though,” she told City Pages. “I’m just exploring what it means to be me.”
The 2-D comedy series, which was produced by Titmouse, will premiere on Adult Swim on Sunday July 10th.
You can watch a short trailer for Brad Neely’s Harg Nallin’ Sclopio Peepio below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufnj9F3fl-4
Image: Adult Swim