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  • Hey Colossus 'Four Bibles'

    Alter

    Hey Colossus 'Four Bibles'

    £9.99

    Coming out of London and the South West of England, Hey Colossus are one of Europe's great live bands. Since 2003 the 6-piece has been driving around the continent with their 'pirate ship' backline of broken amps and triple-guitar drang, elevating audiences in every type of venue imaginable; a doctor's waiting room in Salford, an industrial unit in Liege and a vast field next to a river in Portugal. Wherever they may roam.
     
    Four Bibles is their twelfth studio album and the first to be released by London label ALTER, whose sole proprietor (the electronic producer Helm) encountered the group at their first gig in 2003. Recorded by Ben Turner at Space Wolf Studios in Somerset, it's their most direct album yet and follows a well-documented trajectory of evolution that began (in the truest sense) with 2011's RRR for Riot Season and continued across three albums for Rocket Recordings.

    Lead vocalist Paul Sykes sounds more in focus than before, dialling down the effects and using reverb / delay to carry his lyrics rather than smother. The band has also fine-tuned to leave some room for extra depth. Piano, electronics and violin (by Daniel O'Sullivan of This is not This Heat / Grumbling Fur) all find a way in amongst a familiar mesh of interlacing guitars, wrapped round a taut rhythm section. Like every other Hey Colossus record before, the line-up has altered and the sounds reflect this. 
     
    From the weight of 'Memory Gore', to the subtlety and swag of 'It's a Low', via the sonic extremes of 'Palm Hex/Arndale Chins' this is exactly as the band are live; raging & rail-roading but somehow in control. Grooves for those who want to dance or for those who want to hug a wall and nod...bleak dystopian imagery submerged in relentless rhythms and low-end rattle. The songs breath life and soul - Hey Colossus have never sounded fresher or more on point.
     
    There is a book release to coincide with the album written by bass player (and founding member) Joe Thompson. It's part of a new series called 'Sleevenotes' by Pomona Publishing and the first four are out this year. Joe's book sits alongside other contributions by Bob Stanley (St Etienne), Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees/Solo), David Gedge (The Wedding Present) and contains a diary of the years leading up to the release of this record.

    Touring with bands Sumac and Grey Hairs through Europe, recording the album, line-up changes, the band's history and the big question is answered: Why? 

    Tracklisting:
    1. Bees Around The Lime Tree
    2. Memory Gore
    3. Confession Bay
    4. It's A Low
    5. (Decompression)
    6. Carcass
    7. The Golden Bough
    8. Palm Hex / Arndale Chins
    9. Babes Of The Plague
    10. Four Bibles

    Release Date: 17/05/2019
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  • Hey Colossus 'Dedicated to Uri Klangers' - Cargo Records UK

    MIE Music

    Hey Colossus 'Dedicated to Uri Klangers'

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    In 2015 Hey Colossus released two albums on Rocket Recordings, In Black and Gold in February and Radio Static High in October. Dedicated to Uri Klangers is a look back.

    It's best summed up by the 3000 words that can be found on the inner sleeve of the record, the tale begins: "The 2xLP comp that's in your hands now was initially released on cassette by S.O.U.L for our 10th anniversary show, September 2013, about 50 tapes were made and sold on the night. We thought a BEST OF would be hilarious. We were average at that show and I'm being generous. I'd give us 5.5/10. A shame.

    Hacker Farm and Helm also played. It was at The Sebright Arms in London, somewhere out East....." The cassette sat in the MIE car for three years, soundtracking journeys back and forth across the country. When a new car was bought, criminally minus a tape deck, the decision was made to put it on vinyl. Included are one or two tunes from all the HC albums released 2003-2013, it also includes the Witchfinder General Hospital track (only 100 pressed on 12").

    All vinyl versions of the albums from this era are long gone. The discography is a bit of a mess now, the band doesn't fully know and the Discogs site is not much help - godspeed anyone trying to buy all the back cat.

    2xLP, gatefold sleeve, full printed inner sleeves with stacks of photo's and the aforementioned spiel / tale of woe / occasional victory. 500 copies.

    This record is a fine way to dig into the first 10 years. 

    Tracklisting:
    1. War Crows
    2. How To Tell Time With Jesus
    3. The Drang
    4. I Am The Chiswich Strangler
    5. Eurogrumble PTII
    6. Drug Widow
    7. Warmer The Belter
    8. Hot Grave
    9. Witchfinder General Hospital
    10. Fire Up The Tambourine
    11. Pope Long Haul III
    12. Old No.7
    13. Horsehead
    14. Wait Your Turn
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  • Hey Colossus 'Radio Static High' - Cargo Records UK

    Rocket Recordings

    Hey Colossus 'Radio Static High'

    £12.99

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    Rocket Recordings

    Hey Colossus 'Radio Static High'

    £12.99

    Available on Blood Red Vinyl and CD.

    Initially lurching from the UK noise underground in 2003 like a bedraggled audial creature rendered from toxic waste in a VHS horror movie, the musical growth rate of Hey Colossus has been quite a spectacle to observe. Yet from the nightmarish murk of early driller-killer works such as 2004's debut Hates You'and 2008's Happy Birthday'to more recent nuggets of perversity like 2013's Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo', this beast has mutated and evolved into something uncommonly alluring.

    The six-piece London-via-Somerset troupe began 2015 with February's release of In Black And Gold'- in which the brawny repetition-driven raunch they built their sound on was furnished and burnished by dub-derived spatial awareness and cinematic drama, making it both a bold reinvention and an uncommonly compulsive avant-rock document. Yet not content with this, the band immediately set about following it up with their second album of the year, and one that further ups the ante on their savagely graceful assault.

    Radio Static High'is the sound of a confident outfit honing their attack to become a veritable force of nature. With the band citing - tongue presumably firmly lodged in cheek - inspirations as diverse as Jane's Addiction, Fleetwood Mac (Tango In The Night era) and Cypress Hill, songs were constructed at a fierce rate of knots, yet with a focus and intensity partly instilled by band members living hundreds of miles apart, and partly by the relentless passage of time.

    'We have noticed a small wave of incredible goodwill towards us. We want to give as we receive.' notes guitarist Jonathan Richards, whose chiming lead guitar plays a notable role in the album's Paris,Texas-esque midday ambience..'Maybe the knowledge of our 12 years together makes us aware of our mortality. Time is limited. A band's purpose is to create' Songs took shape from demos, exchanged riffs and drunken text messages alike -one such from guitarist Bob Davis to Richards demanding an homage to Neil Young's Cortez The Killer'resulted in a demo to that effect a mere 20 minutes later. which eventually became album centrepiece Memories Of Wonder'.

    Elsewhere, Hop The Railings'takes the powerfully propulsive groove of Can and cross-pollinates it with Beefheartian interweaving triple-guitar skronk to make a heat-haze-dwelling juggernaut of intimidating proportions, whilst the closing double-drop of Hesitation Time'and 'Honey'hits like Joy Division repurposed for the soundtrack to True Detective. 'After 12 years functioning in a Noiserock/Doom/Kraut/whatever scene of sorts and being aware of unwanted repetition, we feel it is more subversive for us to compose songs with rigid song structures than it is to absentmindedly clang off another riff-athon.'

    Richards adds:
    Indeed, with all the bulldozing primal drive of heavy AmRep-style rock and none of the cliches, and a sound infused with leftfield sleight-of-hand yet hitting home like hammer to anvil, Hey Colossus prove themselves as potent as they are prolific. What's more, 'Radio Static High', in all its sunkissed widescreen glory, is set to leave most all their contemporaries eating their dust.

    Tracklisting:
    1. Radio Static High
    2. March of the Headaches
    3. Hop the Railings
    4. Numbed Out
    5. Memories of Wonder
    6. Snapping Undone
    7. Another Head
    8. The Mourning Gong
    9. Hesitation Time
    10. Honey
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  • Hey Colossus 'Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo' - Cargo Records UK

    Rocket Recordings

    Hey Colossus 'Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo'

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    Rocket Recordings

    Hey Colossus 'Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo'

    £11.99

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    Side A:
    1. Hot Grave
    2. Oktave Dokkter
    3. How To Tell Time With Jesus

    Side B:
    4. Leather Lake
    5. English Flesh
    6. Pit And Hope
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  • Hey Colossus 'In Black And Gold' - Cargo Records UK

    Rocket Recordings

    Hey Colossus 'In Black And Gold'

    £12.99

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    Rocket Recordings

    Hey Colossus 'In Black And Gold'

    £12.99

    Emerging in a haze of demented riff science and booze-addled abandon, Hey Colossus have carved out a notable niche for themselves in the British underground's murkier quarters. They've dished out a formidable array of wax over the last decade, specialising in a primordial barrage of abject noise from overheated ampstacks.

    Yet for all the grit and gnarl of their output thus far, it's seemingly only been a warm-up for their latest opus, which sees their monstrous assault finely honed into an album as beguiling as it is bulldozing. In Black And Gold', their eighth album proper and first for Rocket Recordings, ushers in a new incarnation of Hey Colossus.

    Marrying malevolent attack to expansive celestial splendour, In Black And Gold'marks a point whereby Hey Colossus map out a sonic trajectory that expands on their trademark ornery overload. The songs herein may be leaner and more artful than the fearsome sound by which they made their name on albums like 2008's Project: Death'and the monstrous 2013 opus Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo', but they remain possessed of the wrath both Stoogian and Stygian that fuels their noiserock transgression.

    Yet meanwhile, and with 2015 looming large, an evolutionary process has led to their maximalist tendencies being replaced by a sharp focus on space and restraint, not to mention a refreshing stylistic diversity, resulting in a strange aural alchemy. Here, they sound as comfortable tackling electronically-fried dub mantras like Lagos Atom'as they do the Cluster-esque lullaby of the opening Hold On'. Yet there's no shortage of primal rock action to be had on In Black And Gold'; on Sisters And Brothers'they summon up a swaggering, demented groove that sashays like a zombified Gun Club, whilst on the dramatic spaghetti-psych of the title-track a revelatory cinematic sprawl of sound sees The Bad Seeds and The 13th Floor Elevators engaged in a psychic duel in the noonday sun.

    The vital and Spinal Tap-approved fine line between clever and stupid'has been a location that this London-based tinnitus machine has made fine work of dwelling on for the duration of their life thus far. Yet with In Black And Gold', in a laudable leap of faith, they've stepped beyond, and the result is both vicious and visionary. These unpretentious underworld overlords have emerged from the shadows to create an avant-garage pièce de résistance, and moreover it turns out that the sunlight suits them better than they ever realised.

    Tracklisting:
    1. Hold On
    2. Sisters And Brothers
    3. Hey, Dead Eyes, Up!
    4. Wired_Brainless
    5. Black And Gold
    6. Lagos Atom
    7. Eat It
    8. Sinking, Feeling

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