LOL TOLHURST X BUDGIE X JACKNIFE LEE SHARE “WE GOT TO MOVE” FT. ISAAC BROCK (MODEST MOUSE) + RAUCOUS VIDEO FT. BROCK + FRED ARMISEN
DEBUT ALBUM LOS ANGELES OUT NOVEMBER 3 VIA [PIAS]
Lol Tolhurst x Budgie x Jacknife Lee will release their hard-hitting, much-anticipated album Los Angeles on November 3rd via Play It Again Sam. The album’s 13 tracks dive into freedom and slavery, beauty and decay, hope and despair, and feature an astonishing list of guest vocalists and musicians – The Edge (U2), Civil Rights avant-garde artist Lonnie Holley, Mary Lattimore, Starcrawler wild child Arrow de Wilde, Mark Bowen (IDLES) and more. Having previously shared videos for “Los Angeles” ft LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and “Ghosted At Home” ft Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, the band shares their frenetic new single, “We Got To Move” featuring Modest Mouse singer and frontman Isaac Brock.
Of “We Got To Move,” the band note:
“This is one of the more existential tracks on ‘Los Angeles.’ It’s an homage to Philip Glass, Ron Fricke and Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, with words by Isaac Brock,” notes Budgie.
“Isaac is one of the most unique voices that we have. He’s brilliant,” adds Jacknife. “He gave us this weird, anxious, beautiful rush of a song. To pump up the duality within the song my daughters and I came up with a chorus that made us giddy with its ridiculousness. The song is absurd. The sound is absurd. And it’s about bugs.”
With its eclectic mix of styles, Lol also asks, “Where else do you get Strings, DAF synths and Bhangra-Punjabi style percussion? Plus you get Isaac Brock and Jacknife and his daughters singing up a beautiful storm of a track.”
The track comes accompanied by a suitably unhinged, raucous video directed by Daniel Rashid which features musician, comedian and actor Fred Armisen letting it all out alongside Lol and Budgie, and a disembodied Brock. “The video has me and Lol as Clockwork Orange Droogs Drumming on a Cadillac, while Fred Armisen takes a Sledgehammer to a WC,” notes Budgie. Armisen adds, “I loved being a part of this. I feel very lucky that I got to work with Budgie and Lol… It gave me a feeling of ‘drummers unite!’”
The album Los Angeles was born out of a curiosity which just wouldn’t die. Made up of two of the most illustrious and inventive drummers of the post-punk era, The Cure’s Lol Tolhurst and Budgie from Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Creatures, along with stellar producer and multi-instrumentalist Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee, this unlikely alt-supergroup have spent the last four years spiriting up one of the most extraordinary albums to appear in 2023.
Perusing the track list with its guest credits, you may rightly wonder just what the 13- track long-player holds in store. The answer: a hard-hitting and compulsively exploratory 55-minute electronic head-fuck, founded on unrivaled rhythmic expertise, fleshed out with an armory of synths, guitars (Jacknife’s forté) and supplementary percussion, often overlaid with elite-class strings and brass, then universally twisted, manipulated and quite masterfully sculpted by Lee, with his super-producer’s hat on.
Los Angeles is available for pre-order now: https://pias.ffm.to/los-angeles-album.
In addition to the album, Lol Tolhurst recently released his second book, GOTH: A History, via Hachette Books, as featured in Spill Magazine, Interview Magazine, Associated Press, CNN.com and more. The engaging historical memoir of Goth music and the culture explores creative giants like The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Joy Division, and many more great bands that offered a place of refuge for the misfits of the 80s and ever since. GOTH offers a fascinating deep dive with stories and anecdotes from Tolhurst’s personal memories as well as the musicians, magicians, and artists who made goth an inevitable and enduring movement. The book is available via retailers here: https://loltolhurst.com/gothic.
SPILL BOOK REVIEW: LOL TOLHURST – GOTH: A HISTORY
Lol Tolhurst X Budgie X Jacknife Lee
Los Angeles
([PIAS])
Release Date: November 3, 2023
Los Angeles Track Listing
1. This Is What It Is (To Be Free) [with Bobby Gillespie]
2. Los Angeles [with James Murphy]
3. Uh Oh [with Arrow de Wilde and Mark Bowen (IDLES)]
4. Ghosted At Home [with Bobby Gillespie]
5. Train With No Station [with The Edge]
6. Bodies [with Lonnie Holley and Mary Lattimore]
7. Everything And Nothing
8. Travel Channel [with Pan Amsterdam]
9. Country of the Blind [with Bobby Gillespie]
10. The Past (Being Eaten)
11. We Got To Move [with Isaac Brock]
12. Noche Oscura [with The Edge]
13. Skins [with James Murphy]
Artist Links
Background Photo Credit: Pat Martin
