Leicester’s alt-art garage band “9 O’Clock Nasty” have released their third three piece EP “Growl“.
Welcome back, beautiful people! Hope ya’ll doing well and are having a good time in this Thursday that almost tastes like New Music Friday! Today, I won’t lie to you, I’ve encountered with a quite interesting piece of work by this British band. A three piece EP of alt-art garage music. I didn’t even know that genre existed! But it does! And, well, it’s something to appreciate closely.
Now, I like to think that by this point you know me and the way I write, I always keep it real! So trust me when I say that “Growl” has got me thinking a lot about the way we appreciate art, or music in this case. All in all, 9 O’Clock Nasty seem to take their work pretty serious, but at the same time they can be very whimsy about it!
“Growl” consists of three songs: “Monstruosa”, a melodrama that welcomes death with loopy guitars and growling bass. This song actually reminds me of the vibes from Killing Joke’s self-titled album. And a certain darkness from the goth rock legends Bauhaus.
Then we have “Walkman Walk” a very synthy song with a bass line that walks the walk, the walkman walk. Very 80s, very pretty. Simple yet very delivering.
Slow and steady, Big Fish (In A Pool Of Piss) comes last and it carries lyrics which I’m not sure that I get, but probably have a hidden, satirical meaning. Maybe even political, but you tell me!
This is what has been said about 9 O’Clock Nasty so far:
“At times I have felt that 9 o’clock Nasty were flirting with something truly original,
pausing on the edge of madness, teasing us with a vision of otherworldly beatpop.
Unspool My Heart made me think they may in fact have serious intent. The song made
me believe that under their innocence, behind the artful posture, there was a coherent,
muscular pop group fighting to get out. Monstruosa confirms that belief. A little over
two minutes of tightly wound thunder.” – Danzip Krupp, writing for German music blog Dark Strudel
The band was born after some people that have known each other for years, and been in many different bands ended up locked together all through the Covid-19 experience.
“That highly pressured world where everything else stopped and the madness of being trapped together for such an extended period meant we would either kill each other, or write some songs. So we started writing. And we never finished. We have enough material that we think is strong to release a new EP every month for a year.” – 9 O’Clock Nasty
They find interest in two minute garage rock songs that are simple and hit you in the gut. This involves mixing trip-hop, dub and 80s and 90s new wave, indie music and electronica.
“Where we live there is a tiny recording studio. It isn’t really fit for human beings, and we’ve had to rebuild and repair a lot of it, but that gives us some genuinely very different sounds to play with.”
The band was kind enough to give us their own explanations and insights into each of the “Growl” songs:
Monstruosa:
Monstruosa was born from a desire to do something quite traditional and direct. Something to grab you on the first listen. Usually it takes several sessions for us to work through a song and find something we love, but this was born in one intense night, pretty much as we would play it live. It is a happy song about death. About being ready at the end. Free from regret.
Walkman Walk:
Walkman Walk is a track one of us wrote for another band where it was this immense wall of feedback and noise. We started playing with it and found in there this sad, longing little song about lost love at its core. The synths are probably a call back to old Human League records. The loss in the song is actually about a band breaking up, not a romantic relationship, but in many ways breaking up a band isn’t so different.
Big Fish:
Big Fish was one of our first songs but then took many weeks to piece together. The bass and the vocals were easy. We found a groove and an idea that made us laugh and we followed it. It was only later, when Sydd started drumming along to it that it got that slippy-feel to it.
And, as I thought the band is pretty aware of their sound and they let us know with this message for first time listeners:
“We know that a lot of what we do might be too angular for mainstream listeners and that people either absolutely love what we do or they hate it. That’s fine. We aren’t trying to please anybody, we’re writing the songs we want to make. If people like our thing we hope they’ll check out our website. The band exists in a half-real, half-fictional world and we’d like to welcome people into it.
As well as following on social media, we’d really appreciate anyone joining our mailing list, because we know that if we want to push boundaries and be provocative on social media we could be banned one day and want to keep in touch with our audience. We share an unreleased song with people who subscribe every month, and we don’t use it to hassle anyone or try to sell them stuff. If anyone wants to give us money we sell some good t-shirts from our website.” – 9 O’Clock Nasty
So there you have it folks! Very interesting words from this very interesting band. Don’t forget check them out on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, YouTube, and Spotify.
You can also check out their official website. If you enjoy their music and are able to provide monetary support, you might consider downloading it on Bandcamp.
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This coverage was created via Musosoup #Sustainablecurator