Best Album 2005: Two Lone Swordsmen
From the Double Gone Chapel – Two Lone Swordsmen
I don’t live in London anymore – so I have no idea how this was received over there – but I can imagine that a lot of devoted TLS electro-dance fans were horrified at this album.
After all it uses guitars!!! It sounds like rock!!!
Whatever happened to the TLS of “Tiny Reminders”, “Further Reminders” and “Stay Down”? I can almost hear the howls of pain from here.
Just one problem – this album rocks – literally and figuratively
Tracks like “Formica Fuego” lurch into view like a drunken PiL around their “Metal Box” period. It staggers and swaggers, until a floaty retro-pad lulls you into a false sense of security – and then the guitars come back and carve large jagged chunks out the tune.
“The Lurch” is more PiL like stuff – a bass line that Jah Wobble could have played around 1985 – complete with little guitar slide noises before floating off into a little synth-pop riff that keeps everything nicely down tempo.
If I had a jazz beard I’d stroke it and say “nice”.
By the time we get to “Damp” the circle is complete and I start wondering if TLS should give their copy of “Metal Box” back to whoever they borrowed it from, but then I think again and “Wire” around their “154” period comes to mind instead.
“Sex Beat” erupts out of the speakers like some demented Indy band on speed – with huge riffs and a massive backbeat - before it goes mental with this massive guitar grind that sounds like a Chrome sample – some kind of Damon Edge influence here methinks. This tune is awesome, simply awesome, and when I found out it was TLS my jaw dropped in disbelief – I thought it was some kind of “Chrome” remix.
Awesome tune – I’ve said that already – I’ll say it again – awesome tune.
There’s plenty of meat here for TLS fans - a lot of the album is pure TLS – the electro dub of “Stack Up” slightly leavened with a hint of “The Residents”, the upbeat sinful rhythms of “Faux” driven along by crispy snares and a rumbling bass.
“The Valve” all dark and electronic is the kind of TLS we know and love - a long dark bass and sci-fi noises help to create a familiar TLS soundscape - while “Sick When We Kiss” is just traditional TLS banging it out in the groove.
“Kamanda’s Response” and “Punches & Knives” are slower – but with a feel that is more like “Renegade Soundwave” than anything else on the album.
If you have listened to “Two Lone Swordsmen” for a while you might be shocked at this album – it’s like nothing else they’ve ever done, - but if you have been listening to music for a while - you can see where they are coming from.
“Two Lone Swordsmen” have been surfing the edge of electronic music for so long that it comes as no surprise that they have started exploring the similarities between electro, breakbeat and rock – after all, those similarities are there for anyone to hear.
With this album you can hear the musical influences echoing down the years. The influences of “Public Image”, “Chrome”, “Wire”, and “Renegade Soundwave” can be heard across this album – but chopped up and rearranged by TLS into something new, something now, something with a bit more dark electronic groove.
Or maybe I’ve got it wrong and TLS have never heard any of this stuff - but I think not - TLS have been around too long not to have absorbed influences from anywhere and everywhere.
Once in a while musicians make a breakthrough album – they chop and carve old influences and styles and create something new, something wonderful, something that talks to you with a powerful voice and creates that sense of excitement about music that attracted you to music in the first place.
Last year it was “Two Lone Swordsmen” – who will it be this year?