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AAA Recording On 180g Vinyl LP!
Analogue Mastering & Lacquer Cut Directly From 1/2" Tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio!
Pressed & Printed at Pallas!
First Run Limited To 500 Copies Worldwide!
Writerly Taste And Crossover Vision Forms Decadent LP By UK Blues/Spirituals Guitarist
Tracked on tape At Neil Finn's Roundhead Studios, New Zealand, via The Who's old Neve Console, Wood & Waste is an entirely analog production with no digital conversion at any stage. Mastering and lacquer cut from 1/2" mixdown tapes. First run of 500 x 180gram LP's by Pallas, Germany.
Novelists famously use their day jobs for material - guitarist Tom Rodwell mines his crossover blues career with a writerly taste for the surreal on Wood & Waste, a decadent and charmingly outré collection. Wood & Waste is what used to be called a cult record - a set of warmly anarchic influences and timeworn qualities that is Tom Rodwell's trademark.
His songs resemble ragged short stories, cobbled-together genres from an alternate history. "The aim is to locate each song in a very specific room of its own, with contrasting feels like layers of paint or old wallpaper."
The album's centerpiece is "She Got Me Boiling", a juggernaut of psychedelic calypso welded to mindless riffs on cannibalism that would make the Mighty Sparrow blush. Driven by a bass-heavy guitar pulse and animated carnival drums, it's a fiendishly irresistible piece of music, as is the absurdist one-chord freak-out "Touch Me Like A Teddybear", featuring NZ free improv notorieties Jeff Henderson and Chris O'Connor on drums. Improvisation is a key theme of Wood & Waste, where frequently a skeletal idea transforms into a fleshy dance rhythm. "Keep On Knockin'" subverts a determined Bo Diddley beat with dissonant Mellotron in praise of Edward Hopper and William Morris. "Plenty Time" is a species of prog rhumba set in Roman Britain, indebted to Nigerian giant King Sunny Ade.
Tom Rodwell unites fleshy rhythms and surreal short stories for nine numbers liberated from tradition, irresistibly performed - a fever dream of psych-calypso, misanthropic gospel and mythic soul.
Beautiful tunes, beautiful groove, you don't hear that anymore!
Tom Rodwell is Sheffield's answer to Lightnin' Hopkins
I haven't been so excited by a new artist for quite a long time.
Features
- Limited Edition First Run - Only 500 Copies Worldwide
- All Analogue (AAA)
- 180g Vinyl
- Recorded at Neil Finn's Roundhead Studios, New Zealand, via The Who's old Neve Console
- Tracked live to tape with no click or edits
- Entirely analogue chain with no digital conversion at any stage
- Mastering & lacquer cut directly from 1/2" mixdown tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio
- Pressed at Pallas in Germany
- Limited time download card
- RIYL: Daniel Lanois, Khruangbin, Low, Ry Cooder, NRBQ, Little Feat, Cream, Randy Newman
Musicians
| Tom Rodwell | guitars, vocals, guitar synth |
|---|---|
| Chris O'Connor | drums, percussion |
| Jeff Henderson | marching bass drum |
| Phill Dryson | phased Strat ("Small Town") |
| Colleen Davis | harmony vocals ("Carry On") |
Selections
Side A:
- Don't Be A Fugitive All Your Life
- Keep On Knockin'
- Plenty Time
- Carry On
Side B:
- Touch Me Like A Teddybear
- She Got Me Boiling
- Small Town
- Make Believe
- Dead End Road
