Posts Tagged ‘Cassels’

Cassels – Tracked In Mud

Posted: 27 January 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Human Worth – 7th March 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

I hate to moan, I really do. No, really. But January has a tendency to be pretty shit, being cold, and dark, and bleak, and twice as long as any other month and having to turn on the lights at midday and crank up the heating and just wanting to hibernate, and the bills keep on coming but payday is still a lifetime away. But this January, January 2025… just fuck January 2025. It felt like the end of the world even before Trump took office, and now, as California burns and the UK is hammered by one of the worst storms on record, the end of the world looks positively appealing.

I’m not one to pray, but if I was, I would be praying for just one sliver of good news – and this would have been the answer to my prayers. Because a new release on Human Worth is always good news.

Things have happened in the Cassels camp sin the three years since their last album, A Gut Feeling:

“Close to burnout from heavy touring, the brothers Beck returned to their Harringay warehouse practice space. Jim, tired of his last record’s overtures at pop culture, got very into Converge. New songs came: heavy, and weird. Gone are the sharp-tongued character sketches, replaced with a heady cocktail of philosophy and body horror. Ditched, too, are the flirtations with mid-aughts indie rock and electro. On Tracked in Mud, we’re treated to something bigger. Wilder. More… elemental. This is a record about humanity’s disconnection from nature, after all.”

You might be forgiven for thinking that the cover art, so similar to that of A Gut Feeling signifies a neat continuation. It does not. While the sharp angularity of their previous works remains present, Tracked In Mud marks a distinct departure, and the newfound weight is immediately apparent on ‘Nine Circles’, which brings the riffs. Not that you’d necessarily describe their previous output as jaunty, but this hits hard, bursting with disaffection and blistering noise and collapsing into a protracted howl of feedback.

‘Here Exits Creator’ crashes in like a cross between Shellac and Daughters (thankfully minus the dubious allegations) – sparse, twitchy, drum-dominated spoken-word math-rock with explosive bursts of noise, before locking into a sturdy motorik groove.

The songs tend to be on the longer side on Tracked In Mud, with the majority extending beyond the six-minute mark. This feels necessary, providing the space in which to explore the wider-stretching perimeters of composition, and to venture out in different directions. Each song is a journey, which twists and turns. Midway through ‘…And Descends’, there’s a momentary pause. ‘Can someone change the channel, please?’ asks Jim, with clear English elocution, which could be straight from a 70s TV drama – and then spurts of trebly guitar burst forth and lead the song in a whole other direction. It lists and lees and veers towards the psychedelic, but then slides hard into a monster sludge riff worthy of Melvins.

‘…And Descends’ spits venom in all directions, and it’s tense as. The headache that’s been nagging at me half the day becomes a full temple-throbber as I try to assimilate everything that’s going on here. I’m not even sure what is going on here, but it’s a lot. ‘Two Dancing Tongues’ is almost jazzy, but also a bit post punk, a bit goth, its abstract lyrics vaguely disturbing in places… and then, from nowhere, it goes megalithic with the sludgy riffery.

Tracked In Mud is by no means a heavy album overall in the scheme of things – it’s as much XTC and Gang of Four as it is anything else, but equally Therse Monsters and early Pulled Apart by Horses – but it is an album that packs some weight at certain points, and explores the full dynamic range. There are moments which are more Pavement than Converge, but it’s the way in which they bring these disparate elements together that really makes this album a standout. The stylistic collision is almost schizophrenic at times, but, to paraphrase the point rendered in the most impenetrable fashion by Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus, schizophrenia is the only sane response to an insane world, and this has never felt more true.

Tracked In Mud is crazy, crazed, disjointed, fragmented. It’s not a complete departure from what came before, but it is a massive leap, a gigantic lurch into weightier territory. It’s a monster.

AA

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Beige Palace / Cassels – Waterloo Sublet / About Not Writing

Posted: 13 April 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Human Worth / God Unknown – 28th June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The release date may be a long way off, but I wanted to get in early with a review and put word out before it’s sold out – not least of all because I’ve been following Beige Palace from the very start, catching their live debut at now defunct DIY rehearsal-space-cum-venue CHUNK in Leeds in 2016. And Christ, I miss that place. It wasn’t the most accessible of spaces, but still within walking distance of the train station, and they hosted some bloody great bands. And it was the place where …(something) ruined made its debut, meaning that on a personal level, it will always be remembered as a special place. Beige Palace impressed then (so much so they used a quote from my review on their website and in press releases), but there was no way of foreseeing that they’d go on to support both Mclusky and Shellac on their visits to Leeds in recent years, bringing their brand of minimal lo-fi indie to the main room at the legendary Brudenell. I’d like to claim I have an ear / eye for bands with unique qualities, and that my many long nights spent seeing unknown bands in tiny venues is not only indicative of a commitment to grass roots music and seeking out the next hot act, but something of a talent, but the truth is I simply enjoy these smaller shows.

The fact that Mclusky and Shellac chose to play the 450-capacity Brudenell suggests they are of the same mindset.

And so it is that the ever-brilliant and ever-dependable Human Worth have teamed up with Good Unknown for a split 7” featuring Beige Palace and Cassels – thus demonstrating the beauty of the split single, which more often tan not you tend to buy because you like one of the bands, and then discover another band in the process.

This split single is a corker.

The punningly-titled ‘Waterloo Sublet’ is a dingy, dungeon-crawling post-punk drone where a long intro of feedback and gut-quivering bass paves the way for a deranged up-and-down angular noise-rock workout that leaves you feeling punch-drink and dizzy. The dual vocals are more the voices of psychosis than a complimentary bounce back-and-forth, and the result is psychologically challenging. It’s not easy or accessible, but it is unhinged and big on impact. And once again, Beige Palace show that you don’t need extreme volume or big riffs or loads of distortion to make music that disturbs the comfortable flow in the best possible way.

Cassels also bring some spiky, jerky, jarring post-punk, and their crisp, cutty guitar work paired with half-sung narrative lyrics are reminiscent of Wire. And then, halfway through, the tempo quickens and it erupts into a guitar-driven frenzy and from out of nowhere, it goes flame-blastingly noisy. It pretty much articulates my own relationship with writing – and not writing, and channels a whole range of complex issues spanning the relationship between mental health and the creation of art. It’s a cracking tune, and one that says that for the unfamiliar, Cassels are a band worth exploring.

Split single – purpose fulfilled.

AA

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