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Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood - With Animals

  • Published in Albums

The album With Animals, is the second collaboration by Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood. The pair have been heavily involved in each other’s solo studio work, as well as touring with each other.

Over the last decade, Lanegan and Garwood have worked in tangent on 2013’s Black Pudding as well as on Lanegan’s solo records, Garwood contributed to 2012’s Blues Funeral and 2017’s Gargoyle. Writing and recording was split between studio collaboration and sharing music.

”Over the years, we’ve recorded together and apart. This time, I started this record alone, with many animals as company,” says Garwood. “It flowed, I set to work and out it came. Our music is instinct, there is not much talking about it, just creating. I think that if you are at peace with your work, and feeling it right, it flows, and can feel ‘easy’. Music isn’t meant to be hard. Though sometimes it can burn you to ashes. Making music for a singer, so they can inhabit it with a song means hitting the right soul buttons. There is no hit without a miss. It is a healing record, for us the makers, and for the listeners. It grows natural. We are gardeners of sonic feelings.”

This new venture continues in the same vein as previous outings. Their intensity and passion for their craft spills over in twelve tracks of outstanding beauty.

’Feast to Famine’ is a hard luck story which floats above a guitar part so strung out and washed with distortion it’s become barely recognisable. It’s soul music for anyone who’s long since left the crossroads. Along with ‘My Shadow Life’ is perfect example of the power of Lanegan’s voice. It’s rasping pain and simple messages flow over electronic constructed beats. Garwood’s vocals on ‘Upon Doing Something Wrong’ echo with a haunting beauty alongside a simple guitar construction. It illustrates why these two have a musical connection and deep understanding. The album is filled with such examples. A ghost’s whistle weaves itself around a pulsing single note on ‘Lonesome Infidel’.

We get the feeling that not only is this album a construction of well thought out sounds and recording methods. There is also a calmness to the record yet and understanding that all hell is breaking loose outside their window. With their ability to create sparse melodies they embrace everything from 1960s psychedelics through to basslines that would not be out of place on an album of British electronic producers like Burial or Boards of Canada. Which is not to say it sounds like any of those things – this is a weird world all of their own design.

With Animals is available from iTunes and Amazon.

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Mark Lanegan Band – Gargoyle

  • Published in Albums

 

Mark Lanegan and his band are back with a new 10 track album, Gargoyle, which features a host of collaborations from Josh Homme to Duke Garwood, amongst others.

Even for such a prolific artist such as Lanegan this album was recorded and completed in a very short space of time, with the whole record finished in roughly one month. The short process may account from a move away from his slow paced traditional song writing.

The opening two tracks ‘Death’s Head Tattoo’ and ‘Nocturne’ are beautifully dark and sombre in Lanegan trademark style, yet theses tracks both have a swirling synth based style to them that lifts them out of his more traditional acoustic roots. There is an electronic element which allows Lanegan to paint a more sinister mood. This is based around his ability to create soundscapes and further confirm his talents not just as a song writer but also a purveyor of enthralling atmospheric music. Lanegan himself describes the album

in essence, a more expansive progression from the moody Krautrock-influenced electronica textures of his two previous albums, ‘Blues Funeral’ and ‘Phantom Radio’.”

‘Blue Blue Sea’ marks the collaboration between Mark and Rob Marshall - a combination that sees the pair working on over half of the new material on this album. Although this track contains elements of the opening songs, there is a more of a pensive calmness to ‘Blue Blue Sea’, with Marshall’s influence being felt through the remaining duration of the album. Lanegan talents allow a fluid approach to his craft and he clearly enjoys the input and the process that other artist bring. He openly admits that it’s part of how someone of his age continues to be interested in music.

When I see things through somebody else’s perspective it’s more exciting than if I’m left to my own devices.” 

There are some purely beautiful tracks on the album. ‘Goodbye to Beauty and ‘First Day of Winter’ confirm his ability to portray potent imaginary, conveyed within the structure of his more traditional singer song writing style. The albums ends with on a positive note with the track ‘Old Swan’. Lanegan’s style has never been describes as upbeat yet this track is in his words

“an expression of positivity, which is completely anti-anything I’ve done before!”

As a seasoned performer this album can be seen as a new venture for Lanegan that incorporates aspects of his former sound. On the back of this predicted albums success Lanegan will be touring the UK and for those lucky enough to be at Glastonbury this year he is due to appear on the Friday.

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