Wrong Speed Records
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Based in Sheffield, POHL is a stunning and brutal noise rock duo, featuring former Hey Colossus axeman Will Pearce on guitar/vocals, and drummer Dr Linda Westman of Toronto-based death metal two-piece, Old Hope.
This July the band releases their debut album Mysteries; a sonic tome which draws as much from MF Doom as it does doom metal. It’s a swirling, cosmic onslaught of heavy motorik riffs and offhand musings about everything and nothing in equal measure.New single ‘The Whale’ summons the glorious thunder pop of Torche, the pithy lyricism of Karp and the DIY derring-do ethos of Guided by Voices. As guitarist/vocalist Will Pearce explains: “I suppose you could say that Mysteries is an album about grief. How we live with grief, and how we overcome it. When you’re trapped in the belly of the beast, and all seems lost - how do you come back from that? All I can say is that sometimes you eat the whale, and sometimes the whale eats you."
Pearce, who played with Hey Colossus on their 2019 album Four Bibles and 2020’s Dances/Curses is thrilled to be teaming up once more with former bandmates Joe Thompson and Chris Summerlin and their Wrong Speed Records imprint. Recorded at the band’s own Cool World studio and mixed by serial collaborator and producer Wayne Adams,
Mysteries is many things, often all at the same time. Veering from biblical allusions to fragmented Burroughsian cut-ups, it is at once mystical, profane, sacred, and scatological. Profoundly stupid, perhaps? Or just stupidly profound… either way, Mysteries demands your attention.
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The much-anticipated debut album from Leeds post-punk power-trio and 6Music favourites Objections. Optimistic Sizing is comprised of ten kitchen-sink dramas, ten miniature worlds to lose yourself in. The key topics are covered: performative royal mourning, ill-suited sexual relationships, coastal gentrification, motormouth bigots and–of course–snogging.Visit product page →
These tales of 21stcentury existence are set to a musical backing that is joyous and wild. The guitar operates as a detonation device, a musical firework display to energise and punctuate the songs. The bass anchors with irresistible melodic and rhythmic hooks. The drums make complex and dizzying patterns seem effortlessly human, natural and always very, very danceable.
Objections might follow the Minutemen music-as-socialism blueprint (each member in charge of their own chunk of sonic landscape and mindful of the boundaries of the others) but rather than be constrained by these apparent limitations, they are somehow freed by them. That real estate might be clearly divided but it is vast, limitless, and ready to be explored.
Objections formed in the post-lockdown period after drummer Neil and guitarist Joe’s former band (and cult favourites) Bilge Pump slowed to an amicable halt. They wanted to continue the musical dialogue they had built up over decades and turned to Claire Adams (Nape Neck, Beards) to start something new and Objections was born. The 3 members have also played in/with: Polaris, Yann Tiersen, HiM, Enablers, Felix and Damo Suzuki (among others).
Objections released their debut7"-BSA Day/Better Luck Next Time on Wrong Speed in 2023 and have recorded two Marc Riley / Gideon Coe BBC 6Music sessions.
At Wrong Speed we are not fond of genres, we are here to release music we love not tell you how to file it. But Optimistic Sizing is genuinely post-punk in the literal sense of the term. Objections take the freedom and anyone-can-do-it promise of punk and run somewhere new and adventurous with it, creating a vibrant and living musical language with which to communicate their own unique world view. As a result, Optimistic Sizing is not only a classic debut album but a timeless one.
"We like to think we know what we’re talking about....believe us when we say, Objections are a band to watch"-Louder Than War.
Tracklisting:
1. Idiot Fill
2. BSA Day
3. Nicely Done
4. The Lurker
5. Excuses
6. Small Change
7. Hymns
8. TJOMT
9. Space News
10. Words Strongest