Unified, focussed, huge
February 25, 2016 6:13 AM Subscribe
Let’s not kid ourselves, we ain’t young. We have pretty big ideas garnered from many years of listening to shitty records, splendid records, and albums that are supposed to be influential. Each time we notice our name getting mentioned on certain genre specific internet forums we get the fear. Who in their right minds wants to get stuck playing one sort of thing for seven years and beyond?London/Somerset/Watford band Hey Colossus, "the most exciting guitar band on the planet" according to Artrocker Magazine, have spent 12 years producing noisy/doom/stoner-influenced/experimental/riff-rock. Near the end of 2015, however, they declared that "it is more subversive for us to compose songs with rigid song structures than it is to absentmindedly clang off another riff-athon." The result, the Radio Static High LP, can now be streamed at The Guardian or via Spotify.
Additional links:
Hey Colossus's first album of 2015, Radio Static High.
Hey Colussus's collaboration with The Van Halen Time Capsule, Eurogrumble, Vol. 1.
2011's RRR album.
January 2016 interview with Drowned in Sound.
Review of RSH in Clash Magazine.
2005's II album [Spotify].
Live footage: Hot Grave (Liverpool Psych Fest 2015), Sinking, Feeling (Edinburgh, 2015), full Raw Power Weekender set (2014), late 2015 live set, Leicester.
Two albums in one year is pretty prolific in itself. Two albums of completely different styles is something else.
lol.
posted by effbot at 6:50 AM on February 25, 2016
lol.
posted by effbot at 6:50 AM on February 25, 2016
What is their "hit?"
I dunno, they all sound pretty good to me.
posted by popaopee at 6:51 AM on February 25, 2016
I dunno, they all sound pretty good to me.
posted by popaopee at 6:51 AM on February 25, 2016
Why do you assume they've had a hit?
Usually many bands will have songs that a majority of fans will recognize as absolutely one of their best.
posted by josher71 at 6:52 AM on February 25, 2016
Usually many bands will have songs that a majority of fans will recognize as absolutely one of their best.
posted by josher71 at 6:52 AM on February 25, 2016
Ah, gotcha - so not "hit" so much as "best songs" or whatever. Apple Music tells me that Hop The Railings, The Mourning Gang and Numbed Out are their "top songs". Listening now, digging.
posted by DrLickies at 6:54 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by DrLickies at 6:54 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
LOL @ concept of Hey Colossus and "hit." Well, Hop the Railings got onto the playlist at BBC Radio 6 music (and was introduced by Lauren Laverne!), so that's probably "it." Also, they rather hilariously got reviewed in the Financial Times last year, leading to a band-wide change of socks.
Personally, though, I'd nominate Another Head.
posted by Sonny Jim at 6:54 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
Personally, though, I'd nominate Another Head.
posted by Sonny Jim at 6:54 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm enjoying the number of different ways the title can be parsed.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:27 AM on February 25, 2016 [6 favorites]
- As [[Radio Static] High], a psychedelic state caused by the sound of static interference on a radio.
- As [[Radio Static] High], but this time interpreted as the name of a high school.
- As [Radio [Static High]], a name for a radio station (by analogy with "Radio Free Europe")...
- ...with "Static High" interpreted as a psychedelic state caused by static interference.
- ...with "Static High" interpreted as a psychedelic state that doesn't change.
- ...with "Static High" interpreted as a psychedelic state in which you don't move.
- ...with "Static High" interpreted as the name of a high school.
- As a list of three independent nouns with no grammatical relationship between them.
- As a noun followed by two adjectives, by analogy with US Army taxonomic descriptions like "Shirts, cotton, khaki", meaning something like "A radio that is both immobile and high." (In pitch? In altitude? In mental state?)
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:27 AM on February 25, 2016 [6 favorites]
Yeah I like this band so thanks for the post! Not really sure why there's so much performative sneering upthread.
Fire Up the Tambourine is another one of my favorites.
posted by mcmile at 7:36 AM on February 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
Fire Up the Tambourine is another one of my favorites.
posted by mcmile at 7:36 AM on February 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
Yow! A band I've never heard of that I enjoy listening to!
Nice.
Thanks.
posted by Floydd at 7:48 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
Nice.
Thanks.
posted by Floydd at 7:48 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yeah I like this band so thanks for the post! Not really sure why there's so much performative sneering upthread.
Might have something to do with the band's announcing as "subversive" a realization that marked the decline of prog and the advent of punk nearly half a century ago.
Apparently, those that do not remember "Tarkus" are doomed to repeat it.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:01 AM on February 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
Might have something to do with the band's announcing as "subversive" a realization that marked the decline of prog and the advent of punk nearly half a century ago.
Apparently, those that do not remember "Tarkus" are doomed to repeat it.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:01 AM on February 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
Surely that tension between looseness and structure manifests itself in many genres and scenes (and within individual artists' careers, even), and isn't something that is instantiated in a single historical moment, frozen in time (the transition from prog to punk). Also, I'd be leery of interpreting a flippant comment fired off for record label publicity as evidence of musical naivete.
posted by Sonny Jim at 8:08 AM on February 25, 2016
posted by Sonny Jim at 8:08 AM on February 25, 2016
Also, I'd be leery of interpreting a flippant comment fired off for record label publicity as evidence of musical naivete.
Fair enough - but I do think we've reached the end of history as far as the whole post-Beatles drums / bass / guitar-based rock band goes. Nothing anyone is doing in that format as far as song structure is going to be subversive or revolutionary at this point. It has all been done.
Lyrics / lifestyle / band culture / scene community are a different matter, though.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:15 AM on February 25, 2016
Fair enough - but I do think we've reached the end of history as far as the whole post-Beatles drums / bass / guitar-based rock band goes. Nothing anyone is doing in that format as far as song structure is going to be subversive or revolutionary at this point. It has all been done.
Lyrics / lifestyle / band culture / scene community are a different matter, though.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:15 AM on February 25, 2016
Nothing anyone is doing in that format as far as song structure is going to be subversive or revolutionary at this point. It has literally all been done.
This can only be true if "structure I have not heard before" is a single category that cannot be split further. In terms of the significance of any of these structures to a human listener, I guess it matters here whether we take the possibility of enjoying a musical structure as fully invade or at least partially learned.
If a person can learn to like a new thing, I promise, musical structure still has unknown discoveries.
posted by idiopath at 8:27 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
This can only be true if "structure I have not heard before" is a single category that cannot be split further. In terms of the significance of any of these structures to a human listener, I guess it matters here whether we take the possibility of enjoying a musical structure as fully invade or at least partially learned.
If a person can learn to like a new thing, I promise, musical structure still has unknown discoveries.
posted by idiopath at 8:27 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
Thinking about this more - if learning or habit plays no part in musical enjoyment, then the quality of musical experience can be instantly and permanently identified.
If learning and habit play any part, then you don't have any permanent judgment - you have a correlation between two moving points, the qualities of the expression and the vantage point of the listener, culturally, in their life experience, etc. and the number of unexplored options must vastly outnumber the ones known, even if the difference learning makes is smaller than the innate factors involved.
posted by idiopath at 9:00 AM on February 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
If learning and habit play any part, then you don't have any permanent judgment - you have a correlation between two moving points, the qualities of the expression and the vantage point of the listener, culturally, in their life experience, etc. and the number of unexplored options must vastly outnumber the ones known, even if the difference learning makes is smaller than the innate factors involved.
posted by idiopath at 9:00 AM on February 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
Not really sure why there's so much performative sneering upthread.
One comment regarding "artrocker magazine" doesn't really seem to be performative sneering in my eyes.
I enjoyed listening to this record.
posted by josher71 at 9:39 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
One comment regarding "artrocker magazine" doesn't really seem to be performative sneering in my eyes.
I enjoyed listening to this record.
posted by josher71 at 9:39 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
I can't decide what's worse about "Artrocker Magazine", the fact that the title is so hilariously on the nose that it might be brilliant self-parody, or the fact that it is apparently following about half the bands I listen to.
Regardless, this album is great and I commend you for the post.
posted by lumpenprole at 10:25 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
Regardless, this album is great and I commend you for the post.
posted by lumpenprole at 10:25 AM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
Had a quick listen - think this is something do be done on headphones with some intent, so that's what I'll do later.
I don't think you can accuse a stoner/psych/noise rock band who say "absentmindedly clang off another riff-athon" of themselves as being unaware of the ironies of self-declaration as "subversive". I suspect they're having fun with who they are, and by heaven's name why not.
posted by Devonian at 10:44 AM on February 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
I don't think you can accuse a stoner/psych/noise rock band who say "absentmindedly clang off another riff-athon" of themselves as being unaware of the ironies of self-declaration as "subversive". I suspect they're having fun with who they are, and by heaven's name why not.
posted by Devonian at 10:44 AM on February 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
"it is more subversive for us to compose songs with rigid song structures than it is to absentmindedly clang off another riff-athon."
...the difference between "not at all" and "hardly, barely"!
posted by markkraft at 6:42 PM on February 25, 2016
...the difference between "not at all" and "hardly, barely"!
posted by markkraft at 6:42 PM on February 25, 2016
This is great. Thanks for the post.
posted by umbú at 8:00 PM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by umbú at 8:00 PM on February 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by josher71 at 6:42 AM on February 25, 2016 [6 favorites]