The idea of Inca Babies going back through their sonic archives to revisit, re-imagine, re-work, and re-record some of their favourite, most creative and defining moments, as they do here with Reincarnation, is a very clever thing to do.
For a start, it reminds us that the story of any song is never finished, that the version that you might already be familiar with is just what happened in that room, with those people on that day. Those already into the band will relish these new takes on older sounds. And if you aren’t already aware of the band, and if not, why not, then this is still a great place to start, the sound of the band at their most creative, taking their core sound – a sort of gothic-swampy-bluesy-post-punky-alternative vibe – to even more beguiling heights, perhaps guided in part by experience and hindsight.
And in doing so, they create not only some fantastic music for the discerning alternative fan (in its most broad sense) but music that will get us, let’s just say longer in the tooth music-heads, reaching for the section of our old vinyl collection that houses the likes of Bauhaus and The Gun Club, Killing Joke and The Birthday Party. There is, as the cliche goes, something for everyone…well, everyone worth knowing, at least.
As soon as “Candy Mountain” rumbles into earshot on a wave of bombastic bass, one of the many instruments that leading man Harry Stafford contributes, the years are stripped away and you find yourself back in a time and a place, if you are old enough, perhaps watching an unknown support band in a small, back street club in the early eighties whilst waiting for Jon Spenser Blues Explosion to take the stage. You can feel the music, smell the audience, taste the excitement. (Other nostalgia-adled fantasies are available). Music at its most primal, it’s most potent, its most powerful.
“Buster’s on Fire” is raw, low-slung, garage rock at it’s most sinister, firing off salvos of sonic danger, “Two Rails To Nowhere” is a bluesy, apocalyptic train ride to the outer circle of hell (the one reserved for the inventors of autotune and downloading technology) “The Diseased Strangers Waltz,” and its visceral guitars, and lyrics seemingly by Clive Barker, is as unnerving as the tile suggests and “Cowboy Song” turns out not to be the Thin Lizzy classic but the sound of The Cramps taking country rock and roll into the abyss with a snarl on their face!
Re-Inca-carnated (geddit) is a white-knuckle ride through imagined soundscapes, echoing the past, drawing on alternatives that never were and sounds that are yet to be; it is music out of time, referencing the source material but gleefully running headlong with it into a dark and delirious new future.
Why isn’t all music this brave?
Spotify
Inca Babies documentary film
Ghost Mechanic Nine’ album
Ghost Mechanic 9’ video
