HUNTING LODGE
Energy Czar CD
1. Hero Of The Beach
2. Dub Ghost
3. Freebyrd
4. Arkansas Pine Bluff Golden Lions
5. The Average Sound Of Whitley Bay
6. I Am Feudal Japan
7. Silver Prince
8. Cosmic Lightning
9. (K)Palixio, Nature Wizered
10. The Plough
11. Holy Quaternity Of Country Singers
12. Warning To Birds
From the south coast of the UK come Hunting Lodge with a full album that stumbles somewhere between The Jesus Lizard, Captain Beefheart, prog, noise, punk and a whole manner of other things! Terry Edwards guests on sax a couple of times too.
Limited to 746 CDs.
Co-released with Blood Red Sounds and Farmgirl.
Reviews
On the strength of their debut album Hunting Lodge are on a mission to maim and mangle, musically at least. Their mashup of punky energy, metallic mayhem and super-tight jazz-sprinkled convolution slaps both tendencies headlong into the listener's face with a roundhouse combination of flatulent bass, idiot-savant post-Beefheart vocals and hyperkinetic drumming.
The twelve tracks are spat out with breathless intensity, and if titles like "The Average Sound Of Whitley Bay" or "Cosmic Lightning" only hint at their diversely deviant content, then their actual sound is similarly elusive. Guest trumpet and sax scrawls from Terry Edwards add an extra layer of delicious confusion to the mix, and around "I Am Feudal Japan" the fuzzbass threatens to rip more delicate speakers to shreds. There's no doubt being flung into a moshpit in front of the group would be a richly rewarding, if shattering, experience.
- Plan B
How these reprobates keep this nonsense up for prolonged periods of time is quite beyond me, I suspect that the only substance that would be capable of prompting anyone to make such a racket would be pints of espresso laced with PCP and probably lots of e-numbers…. It’s like being beaten up by a gang of oversized toddlers with violent temperaments…. Or something.
For a debut album, it certainly sounds like Hunting Lodge have found their sound. There is a distinct change in their sound since last years split 7” with Mugstar (which was fucking ace), the band seem to have developed a pounding rhythmic style, and somewhat of a penchant for haphazard instrumentation that is bewildering yet structured. The timings and tight rhythms lend the record a slight blues/jazz sound, this is only further emphasised by the inclusion of some awesome saxophone playing by Terry Edwards. This collision of sounds does create something pretty interesting, and certainly something I’d be looking forward to hearing more of in the future. As far as reference points go it’s probably worth mentioning Beefheart, Lightning Bolt, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins….. I hate listing stuff like that. Just go and have a listen.
- Tasty
Hunting Lodge provide the perfect soundtrack to an evening spent dismembering a horse in a glue factory. Melody doesn’t really factor in Hunting Lodge’s sonic manifesto, it’s all about a pummeling bass that rumbles like a world-war II bomber, the freeform guitar lines of a crack-addled Robert Fripp dragged mercilessly through a wasp farm and a vocalist whose squawks and screeches smack of the sugar-fix tantrums of a retarded 6-year old.
Hunting Lodge’s lyrics are, for the most part unintelligible. Those that can be deciphered offer tales of a world hovering somewhere between the banal and the depraved, bringing to mind Hubert Selby Jnr’s Last Exit to Brooklyn or the rituals and deceptions of Jean Genet’s Thief’s Journal. ‘Found’ lyrics and sounds play a part in Hunting Lodge’s attack on songwriting; ‘Fault Finding’ from the current EP (Scott Joplin’s Piano Rag’s) for example features dithyrambic ranting of the recommendations from an orthopedic bed care-manual, and what began as the irritating chance malfunction of a CD transfer exacerbated far beyond what passes for the tasteful use of glitch.
Taking cues from other artists such as Arab on Radar, the Pop Group, the Birthday Party, Jesus Lizard, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, they have deconstructed the traditional notion of ‘the song’ reassembling it as a giant killer robot that’s going to crush your puny human head in its rusty metal claws. OUCH!
- Spoilt Victorian Child
Working from the fringes and working their way in – well at least a few inches – Hunting Lodge deliver shards of mashed up rock outbursts. There is a systematic approach to the bands work, delivered in the form of large burning fragments of sonic debris and at times you could be forgiven for thinking it sounds like the whole mess has just been forcefully thrown against the wall. The apparent lack of coherence is never once disputed by the Lodge and at best there’s a hint of The Dead Kennedys being played through a meat grinder. Hunting Lodge aren’t so much trying to break down musical barriers, more like chewing them up with blood soaked ploughs, leaving behind a crop of ready to go off explosives.
- Manchester Music
One of Southampton’s most incomprehensible bands is Hunting Lodge. They have taken modern music to its seemingly logical conclusion. In parallel with the world itself, Hunting Lodge is all about absolute chaos, albeit somewhat controlled (to an extent of course)! Every track on ‘Energy Czar’ has been injected with some barbaric and insane DNA. Album opener ‘Hero Of The Beach’ kicks of like a deranged General commanding them to all to go further up the river, but not before they’ve indulged (with each other) in some mindless, rampaging violence Alex would have been proud to have kicked off during a scene from A Clockwork Orange. At other times this record is completely anarchic to the point of insanity. Vocalist Daniel Chandler, rants like a delusional madman. Incomprehensible, almost suicidal, it makes for absorbing, but equally uncomfortable listening. “What is this s**t”, my girlfriend has said when I’ve had this record on before. I do sympathize with her because on face value this music does have the power to make me want to kick the stereo into a hundred pieces. It is utterly relentless, ruthless even, but to describe it as ‘s**t’, misses the point perhaps.. When I listen to Hunting Lodge it stimulates parts of the brain perhaps we don’t want to admit to. It touches on the ‘dark side’, but don’t be alarmed, this is not Satanism at its most evil, nor is it anything to do with Star Wars for that matter. It touches on emotions and feelings that need to be kept in line, dealt with properly and safely. So despite the inherent evil that flows throughout this record, it in fact the best therapy you could have to exercise the demons! That’s what Hunting Lodge does for me anyway, I like it a lot. But then I wouldn’t be alarmed if some of you thought it was just a bunch of demons wielding axes in between drum takes, so it could be that I’m a lunatic! ;-)
- Southscene