Pinhead Nation - Luck Had Nothing To Do With It (Mega Blowout Sale)
SKU
Hum 09
This 'lost album' was produced by Christian Hayes (Cardiacs) and mixed by Tim Smith (Cardiacs).
"A very long time coming Everything comes round again. Some things never go away.
Words that were weighted, wait, hang in the air, unwind, remind us, timeless.
Some things are meant to be, just need their time to come. Some cicadas wait in the ground for 17 years before their time comes. Wait for the temperature, vibrations to reach just the right point. Then emerge.
17 years after beginning to record their first album, Pinhead Nation are now ready to release it. Why now after all this time? The temperature, vibrations, are just right. It’s ready for us. And after all the genre shifting, voice lifting and style raiding in the music scene of the last decades, we’re ready for it. Luck Had Nothing To Do With It is a unique, energetic and unexpected contribution to the ongoing saga that is popular music.
Its 13 songs are punky, poppy, angry, funny, fast, loud, quiet and always changing. It’s intense. You’ll probably need a lie down afterwards.
So who are this band that take their time and do things the hard way? Pinhead Nation formed in 1989 taking their name from the comic strip by British artist Shaky Kane. They played to a small but fervent fanbase for five years, during which time they also released 3 vinyl singles. Always willing to explore, they played their final gig at The Bunker in Prague 1995.
Work had started on the album in 1994 but life, in all its messy manifestations, intervened and the band decided to take a short break..."
"This is a long-gone three-piece who were formed in 1989, released three singles, and played their last gig in 1995 (so long gone, in fact, that they don’t seem to have an internet presence). And ‘Luck…’ is the album that they began work on in 1994 and then put to one side while they took what they thought was a short break. Seventeen years later, courtesy of production by Bic Hayes.
Though they were most active in the early 90s, the sound derives from 80s post-punk but looking towards the more avant-garde likes of This Heat too, all spike-and-jerk rhythms and disconcerting time signatures. Drummer Julian Ison is remarkably unpredictable in the patterns he chooses to underpin the songs, which beat like the clattering rhythms of a heart stabbed with a syringe of adrenalin, while Dave Cooper sings with an edgy, bluesy growl and Paul Casey drives the music onwards with a visceral, grumbling bass. It’s all built around contradictions: stop/start, fast/slow, ziggy/zaggy, angular/melodic, angry/funny (“I’m not gonna dream about leather and willow/ or Michael Portillo…”). ‘Bantam Dreams’ sums up the record, alternating twisty post-punk verses full of crunchy guitars with choruses of frenetic punk spirit. This might not have worked as well in 1995 given what else was happening but these days it’s strangely more on message than ever."-Sounds XP
- LabelOnomatopoeia
- UPC5060174953026