Ghosts of the Civil Dead is this band I play in from time to time when the drag of trying to bring home the bacon starts to weigh heavily on my mind; making me eat McDonalds, drink beer and leaving me with a strong urge to play musical instruments I don't know how to play whilst exploring the inner cosmos for signs of life.
Kind of like a post-yoga, urban form of meditation.
The reason for this band's existence, in a lot of ways, is purely because my guitar loving friends and I wanted to test the limits of playing without a script so to speak, that is, turning up to the rehearsal studio with your instrument/s... setting up the recording equipment... and just playing whatever comes to mind on whatever instrument takes your fancy.
Now most of you reading this are probably thinking: that sounds like a recipe for disaster... a recipe for navel gazing, self indulgent twaddle with hardly any chance of achieving a result that is actually listenable... wankers!
Well... you're right.
Most of the time this is the truth.
Ask any musician just how much of the stuff that comes out when they are just jamming or noodling is something that they would ever consider showing to someone else let alone releasing an album of it! Most would probably estimate around 10%... if that!
but...
... they would probably, quite quickly, move on to telling you about that other 10%... how every once in a while, just every so often, things accidentally happen and somehow, something that is totally out of this world will come out of them! Something that is beyond what they themselves would have even thought remotely possible. Something pure and completely inspired.
It is this rare and precious thing that most musicians are chasing whenever they play.
Often found whilst in the zone, the transcendent musical state that occurs at the moment when each of the individuals ceases to be aware of themselves as separate players and become part of the music, part of the whole... part of THE COSMOS. Floods is all about trying to capture the sound of music performed while in this zone. Free of pretension (sort of) and free from the limitations of a predestined musical path or composition.
Musical finger painting.
Sonically and stylistically speaking, you could easily say Floods is akin to a lot of the music the guys in the band and I had all been listening to around the time of the recording sessions. Naturally. A very probable occurrence when you let things flow and don't try and actively control the output, musically speaking. Some of these bands we were taking inspiration from at the time included The Warlocks, Dead Meadow and Wooden Shjips. All great bands who love to work with a sound that comes across as sounding 'jammed out' and naturalistic. An aesthetic where the preservation of tiny mistakes and the like, go towards enhancing the feeling that the recording is spontaneous, a snapshot of a specific moment in time never to be repeated.
Floods is collection of loose and heavy, wigged out instrumentals. Exploding at a multitude of angles like a raining galaxy of Kosmiche space rock. Completely improvised and unapologetically self fulfilling.
For me personally, the band's name Ghosts of the Civil Dead, taken from the film co-written and starring Nick Cave about gangs in a high security prison, is best expressed in the track Mr Bad Wolf.
This track was captured right towards the end of one particularly long session (about 8 hours) and I remember it was a very hot and languid January night. We were all knackered and ready to start the routinely painful process of packing up all the equipment when completely out of the blue this music started to happen.
The original recording was probably around two or three minutes longer than the version on Floods because it kind of came together awkwardly. Imagine a drunk Voltron forming in slow motion. A few bumps and a bit of fumbling as the tracking radars all started tuning into the same frequency but eventually, all the robotic lions get it together and form the intergalactic warrior robot and save the day. That's sort of how Mr Bad Wolf got started.
The final edit, included on Floods, fades in and out leaving the strange entry and exit behind in the vaults. No doubt to be released as a part of a future anthology of out-takes and demos etc...
Either way, I feel Mr Bad Wolf captures the moment perfectly, the weather, our mood, and also the spirit behind the name of the band. The twang and slur of the guitars, the refracting decay of the vintage reverb and the creeping bass and drums. All suggesting a lurking danger, an immanent violence... a starving wolf pacing back and forth waiting for his next victim; his salvation.
Floods won't take you down to some Strawberry Field... oh no, the places you will travel to are far hotter and darker than any paisley underground you'll have been to lately. Floods is the place where Syd Barrett left himself and Pink Floyd behind forever, a place you don't ever come back from quite the same.
You can listen to and download the album HERE
