Gurt ‘Hoboreaper’ CDEP/DD 2013
Remember the heady days of CD singles when you’d buy a copy of a track you already owned just to hear the not-really-worth-it remix or a couple of live tracks recorded somewhere you’d never heard of? London filth merchants Gurt sure do. Their latest release is a limited CD single to tide us over ’til their full-length debut is released next year.
I don’t think I’ve bought a single in the past decade but based on the swampy stomp of ‘Hoboreaper’, I think that trend is about to change. Opening with a demented martial beat and a see-sawing riff, this tightly-wound sound isn’t what I was expecting in the slightest. Definitely an attention grabber. When Gareth Kelly’s glass-shard-vomiting vocals kick in, it sounds bizarre atop the crazed march of the music.
Around the two minute mark the tempo shifts down a few gears into a languid stoner drift, a sharp contrast to the insistent twisting of the opening of the track. We’re in more familiar territory here, though the sheer oddness of the opening is definitely guaranteed to be one of the strangest earworms you’ll ever have stuck in your head. The drunken shanty-style yellalong that follows is just as incomprehensible and I’m beginning to see why they’d release this track on its own, there’s no way a song this fucking weird would sit comfortably within an album.
The ramshackle rhythm with its swaying, stumbling riff careens along to the finish line, and when it ends there’s a nagging need to hear the whole thing again. One of the weirdest, but catchiest songs I’ve heard in a while.
I was hoping for an extended dance remix of the title track but the band clearly don’t know how this whole single business works yet, so we have to make do with a couple of live tracks recorded at the Brixton Windmill as part of the When Planets Collide Winter Warmer in February.
‘You Ain’t From Around These Parts?’ is an ode to… fake accents? Whatever the subject matter, it’s a damn good song, all murky blues bounce and horrid rasping vocals. Around the 3 minute mark the track winds down before erupting in a final bout of howls and growls.
‘Soapfeast’ is a pretty little ditty that alternates between a smoke-choked Dixie Dave-esque drawl and bursts of punked up sludge that remind me of the hateful, hulking noise that Raging Speedhorn were capable of back in their heyday. The track ends in the obligatory drunken “yeeeah!”s and applause of the crowd. Go check out Gurt live next chance you get and you too could be immortalised in a snippet of live recording!
Label: Self Released
Website: www.gurt.co.uk
Scribed by: Ross McKendrick
