Continuing the adventure through the post-punk, post-genre, post-everything landscape, Cable Street Riot continue to prove why it is one of the most interesting bands doing the rounds today, especially welcome to those who like the idea of old genres finding new life through a sort of safety-in-numbers, mutual-protection approach.
While it is perhaps all too easy to pick apart a song like ‘Follow,’ and count off the recognisable elements (but can’t you do that with all music, and isn’t that to ignore that the art is found not in the what but the how), the art, as always, is to take those sonic threads and weave wonderful new designs from them, and this has always been the approach that Cable Street Riot has adopted.
And so, as dystopian darkwave vibes and liquid digital beats carry a mournful voice on their tides, the song becomes a running battle that unfolds between ever-cresting sonic waves and the sonic undertow, stretching it into both crescendo and subduction. Then it happens: the song explodes into a maelstrom of razor-wire guitars and thunderous drums, that tension of digital and analogue, the sound of past glories and future horizons, before the wave breaks, energy diffuses, and the song drifts out across a gently broiling, ink-black sonic sea.
But what does it all mean? Well, for the anonymous, solo maverick at the musical helm, it is about turning away from the pressures of conformity and political allegiance, of refusing to become part of the pack and finding solace in more personal memories, of remembering old friends and gloriously nostalgic late nights, of the lingering emotions found through sharing long drives and of the strange pace at which time passes us by.
But of course, you are free to find your own meaning in this haunted and explosive soundscape, which is the joy of all music but something particularly pertinent to Cable Street Riot.
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