Wednesday 6 May 2020

Revbjelde - Hooha Hubbub (2020)


I have no idea how you pronounce it, but this is apparently their second album and the one for which Peter Hope vocalises, which is what initially caught my attention. It's sort of jazzy-bluesy with a fantastically tense live sound and is as such well suited to Hope's vocals, and probably would have been called acid jazz had it appeared three decades back, or downtempo around the turn of the century, but such labels are only ever useful up to a point, and you could probably call it krautrock if you really felt the need to do so. You will have heard this instrumentation doing this sort of thing before, or something related, but it still works, and in fact sounds more powerful and moody than ever on Hooha Hubbub - punchy soundtracks to films which were never made - including at least one spy thriller - a momentarily incongruous glam stomp here, grinding synth there, an apparent homage to Suicide concluding the bonus disc, even a flute wistfully parping away on a couple of tracks as it becomes clear this represents exploration rather than mere invocation. For something which walks such a seemingly familiar walk, it's surprising how difficult it can be to really find a comparison. What music I own which describes itself as downtempo frankly sounds like sixties game show theme tunes when stood next to this much purer strain of whatever Revbjelde have been channelling. Hell - this sounds like actual voodoo compared to most other things right now.

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