|
contents | jazz | |||||||||||||
| The Loved Drones | Conspiracy Dance Belgian psychedelic band The Loved Drones released on Friday October 30, 2020 their album "Conspiracy Dance" in LP and Digital formats via Benjamin Schoos' label Freaksville Music. This new album is a departure from their previous predominantly instrumental soundscapes, moving more into song-based structures, but still retaining the improvised spaced-out style of its predecessors. As ever, the band draws on its nucleus of diverse and eclectic musicians with occasional guest contributors (Man From Uranus, Jeronimo). Keyboardist (and Englishman) Brian Carney takes on lead-vocal duties for the first time, propelling the band into ever stranger dimensions and styles. The album was recorded over a four-year period, and started life as a series of jamming sessions in various studios with various members. As the songs organically evolved, further sessions followed (with some vocals improvised in the studio), and in 2020 preliminary mixes were sent back and forth between Schoos and Carney, who added more vocal ideas. Lyrically the album explores themes of alien invasion, laughing (and dancing) in the face of imminent apocalypse, mortality, revenge and controlling your own destiny. There's even a homage to the late Cramps guitarist Bryan Gregory. Sadly guitarist Marc Wathieu (aka Marc Morgan), a successful solo artist in his own right in France and Belgium, died in January of this year and never saw the album reach fruition. It remains his last recorded work, and was lovingly engineered in part by his son Maxime. Within the album's grooves you can hear elements of The Cure, Neu, Sonic Youth, Dick Dale and even The Specials! The result is an intoxicating brew of the best of underground music filtered through a Belgian sensibility and given an English twist! Belgium is quite rightly the home of Surrealism and The Loved Drones are back to prove it! write your comments about the article :: © 2020 Jazz News :: home page |