Tag Archives: experimental

I’ve only just heard this yesterday (and have now listened to it several times), so this is a bit of stream of consiousness/knee-jerk reaction of a review. Apologies.

Without, further ado, then – from the excellent Manchester-based (Salford, to be specific) label Sways Records comes “This Gift”, the latest from the group Naked (On Drugs).

The song has quickly coursed through my veins, acting as a gateway drug to the rest of the band’s oeuvre, which I’m also enjoying immensely. If ever they remake ‘A Clockwork Orange’ this song should (and, likely, would) be on the soundtrack.

The song is a tense, terse, spastic, listing joyride on a tilt-a-whirl at a traveling carnival where regular maintenance is not a priority. Above it all, a louchely crooning Cheshire Cat. Your attempts to focus, as you spin along to elastic bass slaps, joyous hand claps, stuttering tom toms, clarinet, saxophone and what sounds like a slide whistle(!), prove futile, disorienting: a hazy glimpse of Ian McCulloch jamming with Throbbing Gristle; a groggy thrust of Peter Murphy fronting The Birthday Party. The scene shifts to a sidewalk, outside a Berlin sex club – now covered in your own(?) sick, you hear the muffled pulse of the bass drum and the slinky synth beckon. You awake, on the floor, to find someone’s placed your hand in a bucket of warm water. End scene.

Glorious.  Check out the video, below (fair warning:  camerawork may induce seizures and/or vertigo).