Long-serving Manchester UK Psychonauts The Speed Of Sound present ‘Eight Fourteen Monday’, a compelling highlight track from their mega-album trilogy A Cornucopia: Minerva, Victory, Bounty, released via Californian cult label Big Stir Records.
Arriving on the heels of their latest audio-visual trip – ‘Permafrost’, this song narrates the everyday experience of a dreary commute to explore themes of isolation, detachment, and the contrast between superficial politeness and genuine emotion, all while subtly referencing the devastating historical event of Hiroshima.
Since their formation in 1989, The Speed of Sound’s music has always been idiosyncratic and counter-intuitive, in search of something new. Creating music with lyrical bite, expanding their foundation of 1960s, punk and new wave influences, their dynamic and stylistic variation crossing borders and pushing boundaries at every opportunity.
“Light and spaciously airy, the music contrasts with the imagery of a dark and gloomy early Monday Manchester morning commute. The inevitable announcements of delays and cancelations say “we would like to apologise” rather than “we apologise”; a subtle difference with a totally different meaning. Everyone is wrapped in their own thoughts and staring at their phones, retreating internally to avoid thinking about the discomfort of the journey,” says frontman John Armstrong, further noting "Eighty years ago, as of August, the bomb fell above Hiroshima at eight fourteen on a Monday.”
With overlapping themes of independence – both culturally and artistically – each disc of the A Cornucopia trilogy has its own vibe and personality: Minerva is belligerence in musical form, Victory is a manifesto of artistic creativity and Bounty represents the fruits of artistic freedom, all taking place far from the grasping tentacles of the ‘music industry’.
A Cornucopia began with the band’s own love of the album format and a determination to make long-form music rather than merely produce a conveyor belt of unrelated singles. The interlocking themes of A Cornucopia are deliberately made for album listeners to enjoy, each disc being its own standalone entity while also forming part of the larger whole trinity.
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Photo by Shay Rowan
Aural Aggravation 