When comparisons are made to Suicide, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Can, Gong, James Chance, you will know that Hastings’ Column258 tread the outer edges of formulaic rock+roll. They are a true experimental collective, combining spoken word + improvisation.
Maybe it’s the abundance of small venues accommodating free entry gigs and promoters like VWR and Freakz, that enables the East Sussex seaside town to develop a scene comparable to New Yorks late 70’s No Wave movement.
Column258 can count themselves as one the burgeoning scene’s protagonists. There live shows combine mischievous art-rock with a psychedelic atmosphere Blending analogue and digital: bluenote brass, korgs, screaming vocoders and hypnotic guitars with inventive song cycles. Multi-vocal looping, poems written on the back of gas bills and electric pinecones, the band exemplifies the unexpected.
Column258’s live foundations are in warehouse parties, roof top gigs and art galleries. It’s only been over this last year they started playing more traditional rock venues resulting in tightly honed performances through years of playing but considered” new players” to promoters and gig goers alike.
There’s no such thing as a “final version” with Column258’s material, so when the band were offered free access to studio space above a disused tool hire station in an industrial outreach of town, they decided that whatever they left with, that would be the album. Sometimes it’s the restriction that enables the art. The studio space was full of equipment accumulated by the owner over decades of salvage. The vocal shield, prominent on the record cover, was originally used by The Who. Well-rehearsed songs flowed between on-the-spot jams. Fine-tuned lyrics butted against headlines read from the newspapers gaffa taped to the studio ceiling. Mic’s crackled and affects boards sparked. This could easily have D I S A S T E R written all over it. But fortune favoured the foolish with the end recordings providing enough quality output to cover two albums.
This week, the band are offering up a taste of their work with a special video for the album’s opening track, ‘13th Floor’. It’s a true story, stranded high up in a tower block in Frankfurt’s Europa quarter; song describes escalating feelings of vertigo, claustrophobia and nausea, as the writer is stuck in a dark and filthy room with a chain-smoking poet/sculptor. The line about climbing into his BMW Messerschmitt micro car underscores the feelings of entrapment and the off the ceiling rage to escape.
Watch the ‘13th Floor’ video HERE:
Interloper (Workshop Sessions Vol 1) is late night listening; it’s for digesting and pondering if any of it was actually intentional or a simple glorious accident.
Pre-order Interloper (Workshop Sessions Vol 1) HERE:
Track-listing:
- 13th Floor
- Interloper
- Boomerang Jones
- Love Radio
- Animatronic Man
- Strangewayz
- Crosby Goodnight
- Drop Dead
- Pimlico Mile
Find Column258 online at:
Column258 are:
Ross Clifford – Vocals, Electric Guitar
Nick Weekes – Bass Guitar, Drones, FX
Matt Williams – Drums
Andy Cooper – Acoustic Guitar, Cornet (vocals on Crosby Goodnight & Interloper)
Kath Alsop – Violin
Yair Katz – Percussion
