Following in a similar vein to their recent (excellent) album ‘From the Double Gone Chapel’, ‘Showbiz Shotguns’ finds Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood returning to the sleazy, leery, electro sound that suits them so well.
The lead track itself is a slow, throbbing slab of electronic pulses, low bass frequencies and Weatheralls threatening vocals. His voice has a beered up threatening lean to it and whilst the song meanders along nicely it never really takes off. It would happily sit on the ‘From the Double Gone Chapel’ but never reaches the heights of that albums key tunes, in particular their excellent take on the Gun Clubs ‘Sex Beat’.
The second song ‘Feast’ is arguably the better tune. Revelling in a repetitive, fuzzed up bass riff, electronic squiggles and a creepier vocal turn it is by turns unnerving and funky. The repeated mantra of ‘feast, feast my children’ will send shivers up the spine whilst simultaneously working on moving your hips in a salacious manner. All in all not as uncomfortable as it sounds.
|
The remaining two tracks consist of ‘Showbiz Shotguns (instrumental)’ which is, like, um, the first song without the words (and rather pointless accordingly) and ‘Feast (Dub)’. The sharper amongst you may be ahead of me here, but it’s a dub version of ‘Feast’. It’s also rather wonderful, taking all your favourite dub tricks, echo chambers, deeper bass etc to take the song into another, more spaced out realm. The vocals are almost wiped entirely leaving that funky bass riff to do it’s work.
It seems that Two Lone Swordsmen are on a bit of a roll at the moment and have grown nicely into this whole grimy electro outfit persona. Long may it continue.
|
