Nick Hudson has been responsible for some of the most moving, eclectic, devastatingly beautiful, beguiling, exciting and adventurous music of recent times, probably because he is someone who sees templates and traditions, genres and having to meet listeners’ expectations as being something fine for other people to do, but certainly not for him. It is fair to say that Nick makes music for all the right reasons.
This latest collaboration sees him join forces with author Chris Kelso, whose poems provide the inspiration and fellow musician Stuart Dahlquist; the result is what they call a “literary splatterpunk chamber doom/drone band”, a description which should be enough in itself to make you stop what you are doing and check it out immediately. More so because each release comes as a record, a novella, and a short film.
‘Phantoms Of Nagasaki’ is a strange sonic brew, part groove, part grace, part glitch, part grind, a digitally dexterous blend of industrial urges and dreampop vocal haze; it is dark and drone-driven whilst being eminently danceable…as long as you are a denizen of the more alternative club scene.
In short, it is a place where opposites attract, where music is made from rare sonic strands and avant-garde soundscapes, ones that echo the formative experimental years of early synth music but which also feel like a taste of the future. Or at least one broken and sonically surreal version of it.
‘Sorceror Cantos’ takes us even further out, a spoken word piece drenched in fragmented effects and noise as music, perfect sounds to cloak this dystopian, storm-blasted tale, a story turned towards a specifically Caledonian apocalypse by the warped sound of bagpipes being squeezed to their illogical musical conclusion. And then, as if to complete this beguiling song cycle, the spirit of the previous song drifts in and carries us out over a toxic sea.
What does it all mean? I’m not sure, but simple explanations are never really the point of art. But I tell you this: I have since checked out the project’s back catalogue, ordered one of Kelso’s books, and now I’m awaiting announcements of a full album, a tour, a Ridley Scott movie, and the role-playing game!
Bandcamp
Spotify
Facebook
Instagram
