Justin Currie

Secret Album 1

A lopsided frantic drumbeat followed by a hurried fill brings in a strange flapping scalene bass melody. It comes seemingly from a brooding sky. A guitar cuts in, arpeggiating on two strings in a dumb angular primitive way. The voice starts, a crooner in some dripping concrete basement intoning news of a cataclysm. Things are crashing, or at least racing into chaos. It is already frightening. Family pets are distressed, you don’t really like this dim, echoing cathedral of disquiet.

But you venture further in and though things warp, slow down – the atmosphere of doom is relentless. The metal guitar alternates between melody, crunch and a sort of ratcheting, like something with steel teeth being cranked. There are hints of narrative – empty cars, everything abandoned: where will it end? The singer modulates up an octave. He seems desperately scared. Is this entertainment?

The drums are in the wrong room, it’s…—More Rants/Slates

Secret Album 2

Is this a carnival or a retirement home for mad veterans? Why are we in this theatre and why are the rich folk laughing. Is something funny?

You slide into a choir of Jack-the-Lads, get jostled by their bonhomie before being set adrift on a glass sea. You float until thumped by a comedy boxing glove. Images crowd around you, people sail past on the green banks of a slow brown river, grinning like masks. It is heaven perhaps, but you doubt it. You are spiked on the stab of a chiming guitar – dit – dit – dit…Everyone is smiling sarcastically, the bass guitar huffs like a grumpy rag-and-bone man. There is a strong echo of vaudeville but it is overlaid with a savage modernism. Fuzz-tones, cockney warbling, somnambulant drumming and Victoriana. You get thrown from room to room – these people are schizophrenic, their songs face one another like…—More Rants/Slates