BREAKING NEWS RE: HOUSE OF HAYDUK “CITY OF QUARTZ” : I am personally very excited about this one…not only because I’m playing on it but because it’s a collaboration with musicians I have a lot of respect for. I first saw Charles Hayward’s band THIS HEAT in London back when I was 18 in the early 80’s (you do the math…). The original idea of punk had already run it’s course, but THIS HEAT provided all the doom and depth to convince me that challenging music was still moving forward; it made a strong musical impression on me. So to be finding myself collaborating on an album with him 30 years later, on something as forward thinking as anything I’ve been involved in, is a great milestone.
Ironically, Mads Heldtberg, the man who put this whole thing together, and saw it through to the end, has a similar story, except that he was 15 years old when he first saw MY band (!!). I signed his band Dureforsog to Koolarrow on the strength of a cd that showed up in the mail back in 2000, and we’ve kept in touch and schemed musical partnerships ever since.
To his credit, he’s assembled a cast of players that totally pull this together; Peter Peter -an institution in the Danish post punk scene, B J from HEALTH, David Lynch’s musical director Dean Hurley, Anders Trentemoller…. What I find fascinating is the strong musical thread that runs through the entire piece. A trans-generational “human centipede”.
To be honest, I don’t really know what to compare it to, it’s moody as hell, often brutal and heavy, colored in beautiful rich, dark hues.
This is Koolarrow’s first vinyl only release–we’re only making 500 copies, you will not find it on cd, and you will not find it on iTunes. It’s a special project that deserves special status. No corners were cut on production and the extra thick 180gm vinyl does the music proud.