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Why We Love

Why We Love: Decius

Their first single was released in anonymity, but today, the faces behind the music have been revealed. DECIUS have been all over the airwaves recently with a string of fresh releases and remixes. The South London-based acid house band’s mission statement keeps it honest: “Decius is when members of Trashmouth Records, Fat White Family & Paranoid London find themselves climbing out of a hole together at a disco after hours.”

With nine EPs to their credit, the group’s sound shifts lanes from marauding techno to acid-house punctuated with unnerving falsetto vocals and unusually intricate lyrics. It’s so rare to find a fresh take on dance music that when one finds it, they should grab it by the jugular and hang on like grim death. But Decius’s addictive rhythms will probably grab you, first.

The electronic duo Medicine 8, helmed by Trashmouth Records founders Liam and Luke May, was the precursor to Decius. (Medicine 8 did a cover of the Velvet Underground’s, “The Murder Mystery,” that Lou Reed liked more than the original. “They did it so much better than I did, and I love it when that happens,” Reed said gleefully.) Medicine 8 disbanded, but the Mays continued their voyage of electronic experimentation in the form of Decius, adding Paranoid London’s Quinn Whalley and Fat White Family frontman Lias Saoudi to their crew. 

They’re Iggy Pop’s house music of choice. He described their sound on his BBC6 radio show as: “Made by a loose amalgam of England’s most troublesome, wayward and wanton musicians, Decius gets the groove going in a different way, they kind of come at you out of the dark…” The hype surrounding the acid-house conglomerate doesn’t stop with accolades from the legendary Godfather of Punk: Decius’s recent EP U Instead of Thought was a featured highlight in the September 2021 print issue of DJ Magazine, and The Quietus recently did an in-depth interview with them, which coincided with the release of their ninth EP, Look like a Man

Their dark, danceable tracks have won the praises of DJs the world over, and if not for the unpleasantly sticky situation of the ongoing pandemic, they’d undoubtedly be playing a residency at the Panorama Bar in Berghain right now. Pre-pandemic, the group played gigs such as NYC Downlow at Glastonbury, Salon Renaate Sur Wilden in Berlin, and the infamous, much-missed World Unknown parties. Post-pandemic one can only imagine the sweaty glory that awaits.

Categories
Pop/Indie Pop Reviews

notes from the trenches: from Black Flag to Black Books

Black Flag vocalist and renaissance man Henry Rollins practices something he calls Protein/Carbohydrate listening. It’s a system in which he organizes his sonic consumption into two categories. New music—stuff he’s never heard before—is classified as protein, while old favorites are classified as carbs. He tracks his daily intake of ‘protein’ and ‘carbs’ in the obsessive manner of any fitness fanatic or health freak.

So far this month, my carb consumption has been way up, and my protein consumption has been way down, nonexistent but for the excellent, Austin, Texas-based band BLACK BOOKS, whose recent single Goodbye Cool (released in early 2020) is eerily prescient in the same sort of way that Contagion is eerily prescient. Watch it and see for yourself…

My roommate’s been playing the most recent HINDS album, The Prettiest Curse, on repeat 24/7, and I don’t mind a bit. The neighbors, however, are absolutely losing it–but then they always behave as though loud music is something physically threatening, like a crazed triceratops bulldozing through the front door. (An absolutely absurd stance on their part, and I find it’s best to help them work through it by blasting Frank Zappa.)

You know what Eve Babitz (cult writer and demi-monde darling of 1970s L.A.) said about really good songs? She said they were like booster shots, like concentrated doses of vitamins. The Prettiest Curse (despite its title) is like having an IV of healthful, revitalizing stuff. Through my roommate’s love of Hinds I’ve discovered the Spanish indie pop singer ESCORPIA, whose recent single Ten Cuidado has a promo video not unlike a three minute snippet of an Eric Rohmer movie. 

In other news of tremendous importance, INSECURE MEN have confirmed via a reply to an Instagram comment that their third album is forthcoming, a joyous prospect indeed.  There’s been a gaping hole in my soul ever since it became obvious that Ben Romans-Hopcraft’s supremely excellent outfit Childhood were not going to be continuing on in the immediate future, and hearing his work in Insecure Men consoles me greatly.

Totally Wired’s favorite “synth sensation,” JESSICA WINTER, has also hinted at new music. (Which reminds me: limited edition clear vinyls of her LP Sad Music, are currently available on her Bandcamp site, and I’d highly advise snapping one up for your record collection.)

DECIUS, a techno/acid-house outfit comprised of members of Paranoid London, Trashmouth Records and the Fat White Family (a combination calculated to make any self-respecting music geek hyperventilate) have released their first EP, entitled Bread and Butter, available wherever you get your music–I can’t keep track of all the ways to get music anymore–but it’s out there, so go get it.

Yours in solidarity and Bandcamp Fridays,

Annie

xxx

header art credit: @judehavoc