Taken from their first new album in nearly 30 years, Sad Surfer arrives in the wake of the recently announced new album from The Wolfgang Press, A 2nd Shape, out September 27 2024 on Downwards Records. Pre-order HERE.
”Sad Surfer is one of the first songs written for the album, and references the Victorian painter Richard Dadd, who painted imagined landscapes populated by fairies and supernatural beings” the group states. ”Dadd killed his father convinced he was the devil, and thereafter spent most of his life painting in Bethlem and Broadmoor hospitals.”
Listen HERE.
Known for drawing lines between his own techno and the post-punk groups that inspired it, Karl O’Connor’s Downwards Records is a fitting label to launch this rebirth. He recalls witnessing The Wolfgang Press blow a few of his favourite bands off the stage in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and chose Bird Wood Cage when recently asked to write about a favourite sleeve for The Wire. The vibe evoked by the reinvigorated group has channelled the isolation felt by many into an album that sits alongside their best work.
”This album arrived naturally and organically. The tracks came about from a measured process, and we feel A 2nd Shape is timely and essential” the group explain talking about the new album. ”We also feel Downwards Records has fitted in perfectly with this process, their enthusiasm for this project has been tangible and encouraging.”
”For this project we wanted the record to be made without the use of computers. It was important for us that the tracks were recorded on tape and played live as a band, with very little tampering/overdubbing” the band add of the album’s recording process. ”We purposely limited ourselves in the number of tracks we could record by using an old ADAT 8-track machine and the result of how well this worked surprised us all.”
The album features core members Michael Allen and Andrew Gray, who are joined by Stephen Gray, Andrew’s brother. Whereas their last studio release (Unremembered Remembered, a compilation of unreleased material from 1995 recorded by Allen and Gray) leaned toward ecstatic soul and a rhythmic palette typical of the time, A 2nd Shape finds the trio less concerned with anything approaching funky, opting instead for a brooding yet vital set of tracks, reintroducing a reinvigorated band.
Musically active since the late ‘70s, Allen and Gray were originally in bands that formed the cornerstones of the early 4AD universe, with Gray a member of In Camera and Allen in Rema-Rema and Mass. The Wolfgang Press – Michael Allen (vocals, bass), Mark Cox (keyboards), and Andrew Gray (guitar) – debuted with the foreboding and skeletal LP The Burden Of Mules in 1983, followed by 1986’s Standing Up Straight, which featured Elizabeth Fraser on I Am The Crime. 1988’s Bird Wood Cage included Kansas with AllMusic highlighting the albums’s ”dance and funk elements which would ultimately emerge as the dominant facet of their work”.
Queer followed in 1991, with the group tempering their fractured and brooding pop with the influence of sample-based hip-hop. The band’s final album as a trio, 1995’s Funky Little Demons, was their last studio album. In 2020, Unremembered Remembered was released, a collection of unreleased recordings by Allen and Gray.
Sounding powerful and full of life, the original post-punk era looms larger over these new recordings. Allen’s bass playing is as prominent as it has been since their debut. Moodier than they have since those early days, A 2nd Shape feels like music for these times, the only kind of statement a group can make after enduring the growing malaise of recent years. For all the moments of atmospheric contemplation, the trademark confidence remains in place.
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A 2nd Shape Tracklisting –
This Garden of Eden
21st Century
Sad Surfer
Take It Backwards
The 1st
Knock Knock
Reset Your Mind
The Line
Glacier
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