As you work your way through the six songs that make up Noise Factory United’s Visions From The Frontier, you quickly realise that the frontiers that they are talking about are many and varied, both sonically speaking and regarding the social constructs that they are looking to confront.
Opener, “The Quickest Blade in the West” borrows from a post-punk, spaghetti western vibe, a world that never really existed ouide the Blitz Kid’s dress up box, which is a shame, it’s raw grooves are the vehicle for the ideas of the revolutionary proto-feminist Olympe de Gouges, it’s thoughts of toxic masculinity, just one of a number of readings of it’s lyrics, are more relevant than ever. This blend of smarts and sass is everything that NFU is all about.
And if “Tattooed Street” builds into a roaring, bi-lingual alt-rock odessey through the quirky nature of those strange independant shops that you always wonder how they still survive, “Cloud Pleaser” flips Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, throws us into the stratosphere, cloaks us in noisy, lucid-dreamscape textures as it contemplates the nature of freedom. Perhaps, it suggests, that structure is important and total freedom not as welcome as you might think.
If this were a vinyl record, side 2 starts with the strange, drifty drama of “Ladyhammer,” whose sonic dressing would have fit perfectly into that pre-Britpop, late eighties, indie boom. “That’s When The Cuckoo Kicks” is a strange, trippy slice of…well, who knows, and things are rounded off with “Fractures,” a long, bass-driven, blend of bombast and brooding brilliance that recalls The Fall in a more accessible, though no less reactionary mood.
Most of the tracks found here have been released in some form or another, but by bringing them all together in one place, it underlines just how important Noise Factory United is. There has been an increase lately of musicians turning their art into political statements, but none of them has ever sounded as well-read, switched on, subversive, constructively angry, politically aware, socially commentative, and superb as this!
Being angry at the modern world is one thing; understanding why the world is the way it is puts Noise Factory United into a whole different league.
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