The last couple of years offered so much in the way of gloomy, sludgy, yet elegant alt post hardcore heaviness that it’s criminal so many stop with well known names and don’t dig deeper to realise how much there is in the world of exploratory independent music to know. There so much fighting for our attention, and it’s no surprise we overlok dozens of great works every year.
The newest record from British swampy, doom rock filled post hardcore band ROPE (members of Goodtime Boys and Hunger Artist) made us discover “Manteision Bodolaeth“, a great offering that flew under our radar in 2016, and will hopefully earn them more widespread recognition. Today, we’re premiering “Human Resources”, the first new song and music video teasing a digital and tape release on March 9th via Future Void Records, and a short Q&A session with the band’s Kai, who gave us some more insights on the release, its artwork, and the music video.
‘Human Resources’ will be available digitally and as a super-limited cassette backed with ‘The Common Cold’ via Future Void Records (order HERE). Both tracks were recorded live at The Green Door Store in Brighton, UK.
What was the writing process like for ‘Human Resources’?
Human Resources just sort of happened, I was driving along, somewhere in Bridgend, when the riff came to me – I hummed it into my phone, as well as the chorus chords, saved it and carried on with my day. Then when I went home, I literally figured out the tune I had hummed on the guitar, and playing it made perfect sense; I was able to play some lovely chords while playing it and it came together really quickly. Sometimes music is kind to you like that. A practice session after that and I think it was pretty much as it is now within 45 minutes.
Are there any musical influences for the song?
Not really, if they are then I think the song is far more of a pop song than lots of our other songs. It reminds me of bands like later Arctic Monkeys or Brand New, but also doesn’t really sound like either of those things. I think lots of our stuff shows a certain degree of influence, but I’d also like to think our new album will at least expand the list of bands people say we sound like.
Could you shed some light on what the song is about, lyrically?
I think it’s just a sort of rumination on the depth and shallowness of love; both on loving desperately and being wrapped up in yourself.
Who did the artwork for the single and what is the inspiration behind it?
Like with the artwork for our first single and both our other shirts, it came from a google search. It’s just a cool woodcut of Martin Luther and the devil. Alex (Leat, Truthseeker boss) made it and persuaded me to take all the old gothic text out of it, which is probably for the best.
You decided to record live versions of ‘Human Resources’ and ‘The Common Cold’ for this release, what was the reason and do you prefer working this way?
Our intention was definitely originally to release the album version of ‘Human Resources’, but with the recording we had that Tom (Hill, producer – check him out at this location) had done of us recording the music video being really quite good, it just seemed to make sense to have the live version there with the other song we’d recorded in the same session. One of the things I really like about bands like The Smiths and The Fall is there being numerous different recordings of the same songs, normally live sessions or concert recordings. I think that’s cool.
What’s the idea behind the music video?
It just came from a really cool idea Josh had to have a video of us playing to not many people, and who aren’t really interested. I gave Martina (Wisniewska) basically not much more than that brief – that that it should be the sound of us actually playing live, filmed in one continuous shot – and told her to run with it. Some people came down and helped us by looking at us with disdain I think it came out great. Heartfelt thanks in the to Will Palmer of Gun Shy for his starring role: ‘Man on Phone’.
