Lol Tolhurst x Budgie x Jacknife Lee is a demonym Los Angelean supergroup comprised of Laurence "Lol" Tolhurst (previous drummer for The Cure), Budgie (drummer for Siouxsie and the Banshees), and Jacknife Lee (producer for Taylor Swift, R.E.M., and U2). The "x" between each name perhaps indicative of the multiplicative nature of their freshly intertwined relationships. Their initial release is a star-studded post-punk foray into utopian/dystopian, Californian and American dreaming. Album Los Angeles is to post-punk what To Pimp a Butterfly was to hip-hop. Both being full-body experiential immersions, but where Kendrick Lamar painted a bitingly polarizing and realistic portrayal of black America, theirs is a multifaceted black celebration of life delivered in post-punk street graffiti of the highest order.
"...all those things that we don't really, as a culture, like to look at straightaway — death, darkness.
It sounds paradoxical, but it's life-affirming..."
The assembled band members are exceptional themselves, but unfazed by their own pedigree further "gilded the lily" by featuring first-rate members of other notable groups including U2's The Edge, Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock, and (in this case) blissfully psycho-sexy, and appropriately named, Arrow de Wilde paired decidedly edgy guitarist Mark Bowen of IDLES.
Tolhurst elaborated, "We asked Mark Bowen from IDLES to put some guitar on it and what we got was sonic destruction design courtesy of the dentist. Then Arrow de Wilde added her brand of mayhem and we ended up with something that proudly displays its punk roots." Later adding, "Mark Bowen has such a distinctive way of making noise. He delivered something quite extraordinary that gave us a whole new perspective on the song. It was both violent and oddly dancey. It had a wildness to it that was pointing directly to the attitude and swagger of Arrow de Wilde. "Uh Oh' is NOT like anything else – It has one of those beats!'"
"Catholicism is brimstone, hell fire... Good music tends not to surface when things are going along great and everything's tickety-boo."
And so the darkness ensues with not one, but two beat masters thumping their respective skins behind Arrow de Wilde's eerily dancey depiction of "lascivious Hollywood cynicism", chillingly angular, skeletal and tribal. Tolhurst and Budgie embody their "x" in a synergistically rhythmic duel with apparent designs to reawaken the dead for a gala redux danse macabre. The whole, a passionate ritual cleverly produced by Jacknife, the third "x", exponentially building to a masterful and intricate conclusion of cleverly assembled gothic post-punk. As always though, the devil is in the details.
"Goth is about being in love with the melancholy beauty of existence."
~
STORE | APPLE | SPOTIFY | FACEBOOK
LABEL: PIAS RECORDS
Tolhurst and Budgie host the (inside-music) podcast Curious Creatures
All unnamed quotes herein are the woefully, but surely unintentionally, pilfered property of Lol Tolhurst
Cover Art "us" © 2023 – disturbedByVoices – All Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment