“They tap into a singular, powerful sound. The group are a truly elemental force […] phantasmagorical spectrum of sounds and rhythms; there’s moments of sparse scatter-brained confusion, moments of pastoral beauty, and moments when their music becomes a fully-fledged krautrock battle cry.”
THE QUIETUS
Artificial Head Records – the Houston, Texas-based label liable for releases by the likes of Funeral Horse and Terminal Cheesecake – is thrilled to announce the signing of experimental Mancunian collective, Locean, and with it the release of their new album, Chav Anglais.
Formed by founding members Jefferson Temple and Lauren Bolger, the pair first struck up a tryst in 2012, not in the name of archetypal love but in a shared curiosity for genre apocalypse, live extemporisation and sonic exorcism.
Having one of the most singular guitar-sounds in the city, Temple has collaborated with a host of outsider musicians both in Manchester and further afield, while serving as a permanent fixture in Charles Hayward’s Anonymous Bash. Providing a sonic bed for Bolger to lay bare her phonic consciousness, like Temple, she too has served time as a serial collaborator, performing alongside the likes of Thurston Moore and Official: Lydia Lunch. For over a decade she has also promoted a fusion of artist-led readings with live music at her critically acclaimed Paradox nights, and is a Creative Writing PhD Researcher and award-winning author of poetry and flash fiction.
Together – like their creative counterparts/collaborators, Gnod – from the pair’s first clarion call (coupled with a very loose, revolving door policy) Locean has drawn upon an impressive cast of players down the years. Intuitive but at the same time meditated, scatter-brained yet acutely aware of the spectrum of influences they’re traversing, they have become a psychedelic machine free of any regular scheduled programming. Krautrockian in spirit and rawer than the rarest of exposed nerves, pulling out abrasive free-jazz and no-wave guitar assaults that encapsulate everything that’s great about bands such as Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, The Birthday Party, Spacemen 3 and This Is Not This Heat. All the while, lyrically they sore through Bolger’s devastating panoramas of words and worlds
Alongside Mclean and Bolger is the band’s longest serving member, Neil Francis. Francis, who has been active in the Manchester experimental music scene for well over twenty years as a founding member of Gnod has consistently toured and performed in Europe and beyond, as well as appearing in various incarnations of bands Terminal Cheesecake and industrial agitprop collective, Errant Monks. Manning electronics and effects for Locean, Francis is joined by fellow Gnod member and drummer, Jon Perry, and bassist David McLean; a Manchester-based composer and founder of Tombed Visions Records, McLean has collaborated with a huge array of talent from Thurston Moore to Turkish Free Jazz group, Konstrukt, and Can’s Damo Suzuki.
Chav Anglais by Locean is released worldwide on 1st November 2019 on Artificial Head Records. Pre-order the album via Artificial Head Records here – https://artificialheadrecords.bandcamp.com/album/locean-chav-anglais
Stream Locean’s ‘Pussycat’ via Echoes And Dust below – https://www.echoesanddust.com/2019/09/exclusive-track-premiere-locean-pussyc
Sheltered Life PR /// 