Review:'Column 258' 'Interloper (The Workshop Sessions Vol1)'
- Label: 'Property Of The Lost Records'
- Genre: 'Punk/New Wave'
- Release Date: '25.4.25.'
Our Rating:
Interloper (The Workshop Sessions Volume 1) is the debut album by Hastings based Column 258 who, judging by the reticence to name the band members in the press release, appear to wish to remain famenonymous, the album was recorded on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Hastings above a tool shop. With a good bit of digging it appears the band members are Ross Andrews Clifford, Nick Weekes, Andrew Cooper, Kath Allsopp, Matt William and Yair Katz.
The album opens with the greasy bassline intro of 13th Floor a dark pained rumination of what went down on that 13th Floor, while sounding like Big Sexy noise but with a male singer rather than Lydia Lunch. The guitar solo almost sounding like Terry Edwards howling sax.
Interloper Dub does what it says on the tin, this is alternative dub of the sort Trouser Press used to froth about with some cool, muted trumpet, oscillations and wobbly bass, putting this somewhere between early P.I.L and Pylon.
Boomerang Jones has all sorts of odd descriptive lines that add up to the full picture, why you should fear a visit from Boomerang Jones, including his Lemon Curd and anorak shorts, while sounding a bit Disco Inferno (the band), the lazy hazy dub style drumming moves things on.
Love Radio almost makes a parody of itself by claiming to love LBC and the Viet Cong, LBC always made me reach for the dial to find something better to listen to, this is stripped back pots and pans percussion and a slow trumpet part, with the vocals sounding like a far less desperate Ian Curtis.
Animatronic Man is for a woman in love with her Animatronic Man, much as some men love a blow-up doll, while sounding like it should have been on an Atavistic compilation, a simple bassline allows the drums to build a wall of despair around it.
Strangewayz tells us all the things they don't really want apart from a shack in the hills, rather than a cell on the landings at Strangeways, played like some mutated live transmission, at any moment they might freak out and start dance dance dancing to the radio.
Crosby Goodnight has them leaving Crosby or is it more of a Goodnight to Gary or Bing, the left speaker seems to have gone fusion jazz, the right speaker is inflected guitars at distinct odds, allowing this to feel unsettling in a strange way.
Drop Dead among the slow pulses, odd trumpet inflections rising from that insistent bassline, squalls of sound mutate.
The album closes with Pimlico Mile that I sort of assume would be the last mile the condemned would walk to the Millbank gaol before being transported to the blasted wastelands of Australia, this is a violin led lament, the vocals finally come in to put my imaginings in their place, the action takes place in a Chicken shop, in I guess Tachbrook street, this sorrowful tale slowly evolves as spectral analogue synth dial twiddling make her cry, while dreaming of a field of horses.
Find out more at https://propertyofthelost.limitedrun.com/products/865485-column258-interloper-the-workshop-sessions-vol-1-album https://column258.bandcamp.com/album/interloper-the-workshop-sessions-vol-1 https://www.instagram.com/column_258
