Be Kind Cadaver make their official AnalogueTrash debut with the adventurous rock sounds of Lights Out on the Reservation.
Though the eagle-eyed among you will have first heard Be Kind Cadaver on the AnalogueTrash: Label Sampler Vol. 8, the cinematic and noirish dark rock of Lights Out on the Reservation is their first official release for the label.
Be Kind Cadaver (BKC) began as an experiment. Following the dissolution of their former punk band, singer/synthesist Daniel Alexander Hignell-Tully and drummer/guitarist Leroy Brown soldiered on as a two-piece, without any ideas as to what kind of music they might make.
Be Kind Cadaver can be called a post-punk band, if ‘post-punk’ means drawing on sources as diverse as contemporary Ugandan rhythms, Duster-inspired slow-core, Jesus Lizard era noise rock, and experimental modular electronics.
Add in more than a soupçon of psyche improv, top that off with a big pop chorus and vocals reminiscent of a mildly angry, youthful Scott Walker, and you might be getting close.
Dann and Leroy draw from a shared love of conceptual art, approaching the music as more an exploration of sound as a social process than a set genre or form. And if all that sounds pretentious, it probably is: their practices steeped in academic terms such as ‘cross medial interrogation’ and ‘critical emergence,’ which they can just about get away with as one of them is an actual doctor.
Having previously explored the niche issue of (male) postpartum on their 2022 EP of the same name, they’re now engaging with the notion of cultural and political impotence, framing the complexities of contemporary Britain through the prism of the everyday, the mundane, and the pedestrian.
Aware that they wanted to experiment with the punk format, they began sharing a wild list of influences with one another. As well as The Jesus Lizard and Duster, Mauricio Kagel’s avant-classical performance pieces, the country and western hits of The Highwaymen and the art-pop of Yeasayer also played a pivotal role in creating their sound, as each new influence was used as a starting point to continually reimagine their core live set.
That process of review, renewal, and reinvention led to songs like the sprawling and majestic Lights Out on the Reservation. Over 12 and a half minutes, it ties mental fragility to the very essence of human plight, and the body and the spirit’s violent battle with both time and civility.
Humorous observations of the ageing process, ‘You say that you were thinner then, and it’s true, so was I / it’s easy to stay thin, when you don’t have to exercise,’ give way to sobering reflections on adult life, ‘these days we’re synchronising diaries just to try to find the time / to talk about our pension, and what happens when we die.’
Says Dann about the song, “Lights out on the Reservation is essentially about growing up wanting to change the world, and how it gets harder as you get older – the exhaustion of just trying to stay afloat mean the parts of the world that need changing end up remaining the same, to the great benefit of the few.”
Leroy adds about the creative process leading to the track’s evolution and final form, “The song has mutated over the last three years, having shifted through different genres, continuously chewed up, spat out, stretched and sculpted into the composition presented as the finale of our new EP.”
Lights Out on the Reservation is released digitally on the 7th of February via Todmorden-based label and promoters AnalogueTrash. The track will also feature on the duo’s upcoming EP, The World’s Greatest Mind, slated for release later this year.