Play Loud

Knocking around the UK underground toilet scene since around 2010, Reading's Workin' Man Noise Unit have been busy playing countless gigs, releasing limited run tapes and singles, and making a nuisance of themselves on postage-stamp-sized stages around the country. Along the way they've shared stages with plenty of the current UK underground Mafiosi including Hey Colossus, The Unit Ama, Good Throb, Carlton Melton, Terminal Cheesecake, The Wharves, Sly & the Family Drone, Grey Hairs, Gum Takes Tooth, Art of Burning Water, Henry Blacker, Perspex Flesh, Wolf People, etc. The band describes Play Loud: Most of the songs on this record are pretty self-evident... 'Cruisin' the IDR' is about Reading's Inner Distribution Road, which is a concrete blanket that snakes around the centre of the town, holding Reading in a sort of permanent stranglehold. It's been there since the late 60s and it's ugly to look at. Part of the IDR has big concrete walls and all you can see whilst driving through these sections is tarmac, concrete and, if you look up, sky. We drive around it a lot. 'Cruisin' the IDR' is the closest thing we will ever get to a 'hometown' song. 'Yeah, I was Hypnotised' is about fascination with the atomic bomb, particularly the ubiquitous 'mushroom cloud' image but also the small matter of the human race making this thing in order to destroy itself en masse. Julian Cope reviewing the band's 2012 Drinkin' Stella to Make Music to Drink Stella To cassette: Okay, now deffo the best way to commence this month's Reviews Section is to pop on to my nearest '90s ghetto blaster this manky chromate yellow cassette emblazoned with the simple words 'play loud'... there's enough Mithraic fire within these two brief sides of monumental midrange and Tinnitus-inducing plateaux to summon up a whole new music scene around these geezers, nay, these Pyramids of Giza. What's it sound like? Fuck knoweth, brothers'n'sisters. How about the bastard offspring of 'Final Solution'-period Pere Ubu plays Tight Bros From Way Back When, or even the Electric Eels performing Monoshock's 'Model Citizen' into a single compressor microphone. Sweeeeeett!... A classic debut, kiddies; let's just hope nobody with a studio comes to fuck'em up. Includes insert and download code. Edition of 400. RIYL: The Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid, Part Chimp, Mudhoney.