Vipertime & Moron Butler
Format: Mini LP – Vinyl
Release date: 15th May 2026
Property Of The Lost presents a new collaboration project between Kentish post-punks Moron Butler and Yorkshire jazz group Vipertime.
Order album HERE
Watch the ‘Waugh & Peace’ video HERE
The seeds were sown on a chaotic night in Hastings in February 2025. A raucous double bill at infamous boozer The Jenny Lind led to an evening of cross pollinating line-ups, feedback, mosh pits and a breakneck rendition of The Stooges ‘TV Eye’. By last orders local label Property Of The Lost had commissioned an album.
The bulk of the album was written and recorded across two hectic days at Leeds’ Eiger Studios, where Moron Butlers’ frontman Troy Osmond could roam the room feeding off the volume of fellow band-mate, Darren Tracey’s guitar feedback combined with the dual drum, bass and sax jazz assault of Vipertime. The bones of the remaining tracks “A Month In The Country” and “The Easter Parade” were recorded by Moron Butlers full line up in a remote barn in the Kent countryside, with Ben Powling adding tenor saxophone. Everything mixed down in the same session to unite the project.
The music channels the acerbic attack of Gang Of Four, distorted punk-dub of The Pop Group and the motoric drive of Can. The voice and lyrics of Troy Osmond sit at the forefront, his incantations interspersed with saxophone abstractions and fuelled by hard edged bass and drums.
From a 5 minute plus song that slowly builds to an almighty sax’n’feedback crescendo (The Easter Parade) to a 70 second hardcore track with a lyrical nod to Hüsker Dü (Waugh & Peace), the album’s dial is turned back to a cold war setting, but the message is contemporary in a world that’s hotting up.
Vipertime:
Born in the snake pit of Leeds house parties, aggro-jazz four-piece Vipertime have earned a ferocious reputation at venues and festivals across the UK, honing their craft while pushing their line up of saxophone, bass and twin drum sets to its sonic limits. Their excursions to the borders of modal jazz, post-punk, dub and afrobeat have built a sound that is simultaneously unique to the band and a microcosm of the thriving UK scene.
Beginning as a free-improvising group in 2018, Vipertime swiftly began writing and moved into the studio to create 2019’s Shakedown, 2020’s Limbs/All Our Heroes Are Dead and 2023’s critically acclaimed Arise. This album received airplay on BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3, BBC Introducing and Worldwide FM, was championed by Iggy Pop, Gilles Peterson and Colin Curtis, and was placed in Louder Than War’s ‘Albums of 2023’ list.
Moron Butler:
Based in the Kent seaside town of Deal. Fronted by Troy Osmond, owner and instigator of the Smugglers Bar & Record shop. Teachers, publicans, engineers, gardeners. Small town simple lives, using music as a creative release. Too odd for the punk shows and not weird enough for the experimental shows, Moron Butler have been leaving audiences confused and frustrated since 2021. Encompassing the DIY ethos of Minutemen and Hüsker Dü alongside the ramshackle charm of bands like The Replacements, they play songs that are “too short”, songs that “stop just as they get going” with lyrics that are “too downbeat” . These are the sort of reviews that Moron Butler have come to expect. It’s what pushes them on against the mundane. Lyrically the band is inspired as much by the works of Cheever, Berryman and Steinbeck as by the street poetry of Billy Woods and Black Thought, with a soundtrack blending the sounds of Wire and The Fall shot through with Silver Apples, Joy Division and a peppering of US West Coast punk from across the decades. These are songs about history. The small quiet moments that have been forgotten, alongside the events that continue to haunt our thoughts. Three split 7 inch singles with three diverse and equally undefinable bands have done nothing to help Moron Butler slide easily into a category. Embrace the confusion.
“That was Vipertime. I wouldn’t mind hanging out somewhere where that was going on. I guess I’d have to go to Leeds” – Iggy Pop
“Really fucking happening. I dig this big time.” – Mike Watt (Minutemen / Stooges)
“It transported me back to 1979. Me as a 17 year old post-punk kid at Futurama Festival in Leeds watching PiL, Killing Joke, The Fall and Cabaret Volatire.” Lubi Jovanovic (DIG Family, Leeds Jazz Festival Curator)
“It’s like The Fall combined forces with Cravats with the angular rhythm and cutting attack of Wire and Gang Of Four trying to push through. Then there’s a Beefheart undertow lurking beneath it all. Got your interest yet?” Nathan Brown, Louder Than War
The two bands take the collaboration on the road :
Weds 20th May – Whittles, Oldham (part of Manchester Jazz Festival)
Weds 27th May – Wharf Chambers, Leeds (part of Leeds Jazz Festival)
Thurs 28th May – The Lighthouse, Deal
Fri 29th May – The Blue Monk, London (with Sly & the Family Drone)
Sat 30th May – Jenny Lind, Hastings
Weds 3rd June – Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham
VIPERTIME are:
Ben Powling – Tenor Saxophone
Matías Reed – Bass Guitar
Luke Reddin-Williams – Drums
Josh Smout – Drums
MORON BUTLER are:
Troy Osmond – Vocals
Darren Tracey – Guitar & Keys
Liam Renihan – Bass
Simon Osmond – Drums
