These
New Puritans
Beat
Pyramid (Domino Recording Co)
These new Puritans, a group of
four 19- year olds from Southend, UK are de facto band leader
Jack Barnett (vocals, guitar), his twin brother George (drums),
Thomas Hein (bass, sampler) and Sophie Sleigh-Johnson (synth,
sampler). They have accomplished much in their brief existence.
Their debut EP, Now Pluvial, came about as a result
of one intense, 24-hour session in October 2006 in the shed-cum-studio
assembled by the band. Recorded in harsh, digital audio onto
Jack's laptop, the EP was released on 7" vinyl in a limited
edition of 500 copies, before being made available as a free
download for a single day, and then deleted.
In early 2007, George was invited to work with Hedi Slimane
on his autumn '07 collection for Dior Homme. A week before
the catwalk show, Slimane called Jack to Paris, requesting
of him the no-small task of composing a suitable 15-minute
soundtrack. The resulting “Navigate, Navigate”
showed the band, in only a few short months, to have moved
light years ahead of Now Pluvial. A collaboration
in the truest sense of the word, it seemed to draw as much
of the resulting press attention as did Slimane's sleek, elegant
costumes.
By this stage, the band had begun to earn a strong reputation
for their furious live shows – first in dingy East London
clubs, and then across the UK and Europe. Onstage, clad in
a neat uniform of black and gold, These New Puritans have
the capacity to draw you in and knock you out in the same
breath. The band's ringleader, Jack is possessed and mage-like
wearing armour, reaching out to the heavens for inspiration.
George plays the drums with a fury that suggests, where he
not behind the kit, he might need to kill a man; Thomas flits
between a rack of samplers and his bass guitar in half-studied,
half-manic concentration; and Sophie stands ice cold, summoning
sounds from an ancient synthesizer and a miniature sequencer.
Beat Pyramid, their full-length debut on Domino Records,
is the next phase in These New Puritans' hyperbolic progression.
Recorded alongside Gareth Jones – the producer of albums
by Einsturzende Neubauten, Liars, and Wire’s most electronica
inspired albums – its songs are an ever-mutating blur
of brash chords, subtle details, and taut rhythms, borne of
influences as disparate as Sonic Youth and dubstep, This Heat
and Greek pottery, David Lynch and Dr. Feelgood, J Dilla and
the 16th century occultist John Dee.
This is a band of extremes. The songs on Beat Pyramid have
an immediacy that belies their complex themes: “Numbers”
is typical of the band’s output, marrying themes of
mediaeval numerology to pop choruses and a colossal dub-step
drum loop. A truly modern pop song. “Infinitytinifni”
a celebration of the melting of the polar ice-caps set to
one chord and three drums; “Swords Of Truth” is
centered around a dancehall-ish beat with cut-up drums, named
after the terrorist cell linked with the kidnap of BBC journalist
Alan Johnson, that may or may not also have been written in
homage to the Wu-Tang Clan.
The first (and last) thing you'll hear, however, is a strange,
dislocated voice. "We started off with just this voice;
this fragment of voice saying 'I Will Say This Twice, I Will
Say This Twice' – that was the mystery," says Jack.
The idea was to create a continuously revolving album that
has no beginning or end. "And we thought 'OK, where can
we go now?' We wanted to make a pyramid with our sound. Cutting,
carving a pyramid out of the air waves – like the sounds
pulsing through the air and carving out a pyramid structure.
It took on a lot of other meanings, and you can hear them
all in the album. It has all the secrets, labyrinths and tunnels
that a pyramid has.”
"This music is weightless," says Jack midway through
'Swords Of Truth', perhaps the most striking track on the
album. "This music's symbolic." In seven words,
he manages to sum up his band better than anyone else could
– in typically oblique fashion, of course.
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