We had an electric guitar, a banjo, a washboard, a drum, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored gadgets, and also cowboy hats, a
5 reasons to listen Bain Wolfkind’s “Hand Of Death”
Bain Wolfkind is back with his new LP “Hand Of Death”, released by Tesco Germany. This time, he seems to have found a way to shake up his sound quite a bit without sacrificing much of its best features. Here are five main reasons, in our opinion, to add “Hand Of Death” to your collection as soon as possible:
- Its unexpectedly electronic sound
And when we say “electronic”, we mean that in every sense of the word. Wolfkind’s usual balance between acoustic instrumentation and subtle electronic elements is heavily reinterpreted on “Hand Of Death”. Hard electronic beats along with a variety of synthesizers create a freezing cold analog sound. For those familiar with Wolfkind’s brutal side project, Novo Homo, this head-first dive into electronica might not come as such a surprise, but within the established Wolfkind creative narrative it is a pleasantly jarring novelty.
- … and how bizarrely well it fits
Curiously enough, the new direction fits so organically into Wolfkinds’s trademark style that its weirdness quickly wears off. The archives of music history are packed to the gills with cases in which musicians’ attempts to reinvent themselves by heading in a radically new direction backfired tremendously. Thankfully, this does not seem to be the case with “Hand of Death”. Wolfkind has managed to venture into decidedly new territory without losing track of his musical origins. Not a bad thing at all nowadays, and not that frequent.
- Obviously, the music itself
The opening track, “Blood Trails” commands the listener’s attention, hearkening back in some way to the good old “Pimp Stick” from 12-year old classic “Music For Lovers and Gangsters”: the same ruthless dominance, pounding rhythm and raspy voice. The rest of the new tracks – “Down Town”, “I’m a Dirty Man” and the remainder keep the album’s standard consistently high. Bain Wolfkind’s peculiar composing style with its primitivistically harsh looped structures jams itself like a needle into your brain, the songs almost forcibly replaying themselves hours and days later compulsively in your head. Listen through only once and you’ll be surprised at the number of tracks you’ll already have memorized.
- The fun of it
One of the best (or worst, we suppose, to some people) things about Bain Wolfkind’s oeuvre is the way in which it all comes together to form a cohesive meta-universe: a long story with different characters and settings; the narrator himself among them. This vivid world full of pimps and prostitutes, criminals and junkies, vagabonds and fallen heroes is a perfectly continuous fictional reality which entertains the listener on several levels beyond the aural. Just make sure not to take the purposefully gaudy spaghetti western ambience too seriously – despite the deep dark holes Wolfkind’s heroes find themselves in, with certain exceptions, the primary purpose of their stories is your amusement.
- The atmosphere
Of course, an album’s ineffable “atmosphere” is the biggest draw – especially for any fan who is not a native speaker of the artists’ language and might not understand all the intricacies of the lyrics. As seasons pass and trends change, Bain Wolfkind continues to reliably deliver the dark, decadent mood that enamored us to him in the beginning. By flirting brazenly with Americana and blues and mixing it with the desolate Australian desert dust he concocts an unholy viscous, captivating Noir landscape – as hopeless as it is seductive. “Hand Of Death” does a stellar job of carrying on with that tradition, and we strongly suggest any fan of Bain Wolfkind or generally dark music with a noir-ish edge to give it a try.
Music, just like any other art medium, serves to reflect our environment and to make sense of our place in the world, both