The Phantom Band releases Checkmate Savage January 27th, 2009 on Glasgow label Chemikal Underground. Recorded in Glasgow at the label's own Chem 19 and then in Franz Ferdinand's Govan facility, this record features Paul Savage of The Delgados as producer, engineer, and guiding force. The recording sessions were like their early jams: long, meandering and experimental; the band beating out rhythms on broken wood blocks and organist Andy's 'shelvaphones', a home-made instrument created from metal shelf brackets.
The end result is truly special, bringing to mind the beat savvy of The Beta Band, the other-worldliness of Super Furry Animals and the mood of Hallowed Ground-era Violent Femmes.
They called themselves The Phantom Band after a period of switching their identity with each successive gig, performing as Wooden Trees, Robert Redford and more. Early photos of the band pictured them with bags over their heads. It's all part of their mystery and sense of the bizarre: some shows have seen them play with a giant, smoke breathing wolf head, others, with a Stairmaster onstage so audience members can work-out during their set.
How can you not love a band like that and that sounds good?
Download: Folk Song Oblivion
Download: Burial Sounds
Download: Left Hand Wave
The end result is truly special, bringing to mind the beat savvy of The Beta Band, the other-worldliness of Super Furry Animals and the mood of Hallowed Ground-era Violent Femmes.
They called themselves The Phantom Band after a period of switching their identity with each successive gig, performing as Wooden Trees, Robert Redford and more. Early photos of the band pictured them with bags over their heads. It's all part of their mystery and sense of the bizarre: some shows have seen them play with a giant, smoke breathing wolf head, others, with a Stairmaster onstage so audience members can work-out during their set.
How can you not love a band like that and that sounds good?
Download: Folk Song Oblivion
Download: Burial Sounds
Download: Left Hand Wave
1 comment:
I was passed a promo of the Checkmate Savage album by someone at work and now this is the blurb I feel is my human duty to bounce around the blog pages like a crazy man...
It is the best album I've heard in absolutely ages, as I toe-tapped my way through its synthy-krautrock-with-a-twist-of-something-sweet anthems (with a little sniff of 70s rock), stopping only to be moved to tears by the stunningly beautiful folk hymn 'Island'. This is a band who seem to have so much to offer and, if any criticism is due, then it can only be that perhaps they are holding back a little on this record (?) for the sake of making a concise and accessible album. Don't take this too negatively- on the contrary, I love the record how it is- my feeling that this might only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what might have ended up on this lp only fills me with confidence that Checkmate Savage will serve as a neat stepping stone to greater magic with the next one as this promising band find their feet and settle into the public domain. In other words, I have a feeling that this is a band we'll be hearing alot more of.
"rocks and blood, blood turned an oily black beneath the hard northern starlight" were the words used in a great review I just read of Checkmate Savage. Although all the songs are fun and up-beat, varying a great deal in style (eclectic genre-hopping) there is a subtle darkness that pervades. Being from Scotland originally I get a strong sense of an ancient and mysterious beat thudding it's way through the cold earth and onto the lp, or the faint shreek of a banshee echoing from the misty gloaming and through the epic tracks. The faint reverberation of countless untimely deaths, the distant murmur of a free church gathering, a creek and a scratch from the dark foundations of Roslyn chapel and a stain on Aleister Crowley's pyjama bottoms... spooky phantoms, who the heck are you?!
Ross
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