Black Ribbon releases his debut album Strobe on 28th September on CD and digital formats. The album is available to pre-order now from us here. The CD will also be available from Jumbo and Crash Records in Leeds, Vinyl Tap in Huddersfield and Wah Wah Records in Wakefield. Downloads and streams will be available at all the usual places you find those.
Black Ribbon is the latest
project from Philophobia mainstay Tim Metcalfe (St Gregory Orange, Yard Wars
and more). Recorded in his Leeds home studio, ‘Strobe’ combines the DNA of a
multitude of genres; from Post-Punk to Dub, Noise to Disco with an aim to
create a singular miasma of sound.
Influenced by the
nightmarish cinematic universes of David Lynch and David Cronenberg’s detached
surrealism, as well as William Burroughs’ scissor-ed sci-fi narratives and JG
Ballard’s cold pathologist-like depictions of violence; ‘Strobe’ trades in
clipped lyrical and musical motifs: A dark soundtrack evoking the peculiar
glamour of some non-existent narcotic underworld.
“It’s easy to create
something totally freeform and leftfield” say Metcalfe, “granted it’s not easy
to do it well. Not everyone’s gonna
come up with Trout Mask Replica by hammering on a piano. But what’s infinitely
more interesting to me is when you inter-pollinate that with elements of pop music;
create some mutant form that exists between the two extremes. That midpoint
between two seemingly incompatible worlds is where it gets interesting. Think
about Timbaland’s late 90s / early 2000s productions. They’re totally
non-elitist, populist collages of sound that are so seamlessly constructed they
don’t even register as ‘weird’. Nobody’s quietly pontificating over the musical
“meaning” of this stuff. But seriously, take out the vocals; those beats
consist of a really interesting, minimalist combination of sounds. I mean,
everyone knows this, it’s not some huge revelation, but it’s still an
under-used vocabulary in a world that’s so musically fragmented”.
Thus, angular guitars and
discordant synthesizers are (mis)treated through vocoders and electronics as
time-stretched jazz horns buckle and blare, yet the familiar thud of an 808
kick or a funk-infused bass line remains present to ground the enterprise.
“This is body music. It’s
not music to scratch your chin to. I mean, fine; there’s hopefully enough there
lyrically to pique interest. There’s some sort of surreal, ultra-violent crime narrative
running through it, populated by grotesque characters and cut up into stray
phrases. But that’s really not what this album is about. It’s about everything
working in tandem to create a world. And hopefully you can dance in it”.
Listen to the songs that inspired the album on our Black Ribbon curated playlist.
