14th October 2022
Christopher Nosnibor
I’ve likely mentioned it before, but on the one hand, Leeds has quite a distinctive sound, albeit one that’s evolved over the last decade, bit on the other, its scene is characterised by its diversity and eclecticism. It’s too be expected, of course: it’s a big city with two massive universities and a lot of small venues where artists can try out and develop their style and draw influence and inspiration from others. Time was when everyone was either doing instrumental post-rock or making a massive fucking racket.
Leeds based musician and recording engineer Rob Slater AKA Carpet belongs to the eternal production line of acoustic-based artists that’s not so much a Leeds thing but a music thing – but he himself is an integral part f the Leeds scene, having played in a number of standout bands, including Thank, Mi Mye, Post War Glamour Girls, and The Spills, as well as ‘working as a recording-engineer/producer from his own Greenmount Studios in Armley where, this year alone, his credits include Yard Act’s debut ‘The Overload’, as well as debut albums from Leeds peers Thank and Crake (with whom Slater plays drums, and who I reviewed just the other day for Whisperin’ and Hollerin’.
The press release promises ‘four tracks of thoughtful and introspective beauty, offering a compelling and unhurried insight into Slater’s musical world’. And it does that.
There’s nothing remarkable about the songs or their execution: Slater’s songwriting and execution is simply exactly as it should be: tight, emotive, melodic. It’s not exciting or dramatic by any means: it’s overtly introspective and thoroughly accessible, with easy-going songs. It’s clear that Slater simply has no interest in going massive. This may not be his choice, so much as a limitation of the medium. That’s certainly not a criticism: Carpet has a wide, if low-level appeal, and while it is, in many ways, a functional indie folk work, it’s also musically entertaining and easy on the ear, and does the job.
What is the job? Of being music. Yes, sometimes, that’s enough.
AA
Benefits – Thump
Posted: 20 October 2022 in Singles and EPsTags: anger, Benefits, Heavy, Industrial, Noise, Political, Rage, revolution, Rolling Stone Magazine, social commentarry, Thump, UK Tour Dates
21st October 2022
Christopher Nosnibor
What a week to drop a new single. Especially if you’re a politically-charged British band. And particularly if you’re Benefits. Their meteoric ascendancy continues unabated: still without label, management, or PR, they’ve had the video for their new single premiered on none other than Rolling Stone Magazine’s website. They are most certainly not your typical Rolling Stone act. Yes, the magazine may historically have been an outlet for Hunter S. Thomson’s writing and been both political and cutting edge, more recently, it’s been very much more establishment. But it’s reach is huge, and if this suggests by any means that Benefits have gone establishment, you’re either nuts, or you’ve not heard of Benefits before.
For a band like this to be given such a platform isn’t simply a big deal – it’s practically the sounding horn of revolution. And as the British government collapses around our ears faster than 24/7 scrolling news can update their marquees, the timing could not be better.
Against a grinding, undulating, distorted mechanical throb, Kingsley Hall delivers another lacerating dissection of Real Life, carving his way through anxiety and dayjob drudgery, corporate and political doublespeak, endless bullshit filtered and amplified through the echo chambers of social media, ‘failure masked as victory’.
Two-thirds in, a hefty industrial beat kicks in and gives a solidity to the squalling blast of thick, thick noise, and the roaring rage yields to a crisp, clinical spoken word monologue that in many ways hits even harder than that savage raw-throated primal scream, and there’s glimmer of home as he intimates ‘we can win this’… and then, abruptly, nothing. It’s the most unexpected ending to a sing since Dinosaur Jr’s cover of The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’.
It’s also Benefits’ most uncompromisingly brutal and heavyweight release yet, as well as their most fully realised.
The world is changing fast. We may be quite literally drowning in shit on the coasts of this brown and deeply unpleasant pleasant land, but Benefits are doing their bit to make it a better place, not by bringing sunshine, but telling it like it is.
AA
Benefits are on your in November: