The Limbonauts hail from another dimension. Or maybe from a studio in the outer limits of Texas. Who knows?
The band say “we don’t exist” actually do, given that they’ve given u their top 5 albums. Unless they haven’t, in which case, we are scared and you should be too.
Grace Jones: Nightclubbing
A perfect album from our alien queen. The way it rolls in on that sinister Sly and Robbie reggae adjacent rhythm with Grace’s imperious spoken vocal is utterly thrilling, gets us every time. The colours and shades of the production are endlessly fascinating, overseen in his Caribbean studio by Island giant Chris Blackwell and his all star band of session musicians in clouds of suspicious smoke. The divine Ms Jones’ version of Iggy Pop’s Nightclubbing is the aural equivalent of bumping into a gang of freaks down a dark alley, and there has never been a groovier dance song than Pull Up to the Bumper: FACT! You can sing that over any dance groove, and we know, cos we do it all the time. Made in 1981 and still sounds like the future.
David Bowie: Blackstar
It almost goes without saying that All of The Man Who Fell to Earth’s seventies albums remain essential listening for the Limbonauts, setting the standards for alien rock. It’s hard to get past Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, Station to Station, Low and Heroes. But his magnificently strange 2016 swansong is as absorbing as anything Bowie ever recorded, and still sucks us into his swirling world of avant jazz death songs like a musical black hole. It blows our hive mind that he released this on his 69th birthday and then returned to his home world two days later. He will be back. Keep watching the skies.
Grinderman: Grinderman
Limbonauts love lyrics. Words are what makes a song come alive to itself, great lyrics separate the bloodiest artists from the mass of whimsical musical dilettantes. If only Mozart or Beethoven had a decent lyricist, what might they have come up with, eh? Nick Cave is the wordiest motherfucker in rock history, well, at least since Dylan in his wired to the moon prime. We are inspired by everything Cave had done with the Bad Seeds and love the understated experimental journey he has embarked on with grand wizard Warren Ellis in his grieving years, but we love guitars and distortion and bad ass rock and roll too. Grinderman was their nasty little side project in the dull noughties, essentially the Bad Seeds reinventing themselves as the world’s stinkiest garage rock outfit, unleashing Cave at his most fervid, with huge gurgitations of poetry and prose in unhinged surrealist torrents that pluck meaning out of strange conjugations and colliding imagery. Grinderman albums are not for the faint hearted. This came out in 2006. I am not sure No Pussy Blues and Go Tell the Women We Are Leaving would survive our politically censorious times. But we all know Nick’s black heart is in the right place.
Daft Punk: Random Access Memories
Our brothers in helmets. Limbonauts love to get down and dizzy, and we can cut up to everything from 70’s funk and soul to 21st century EDM – but the question is will you still respect your favourite dance records in the morning? With their squelchy analogue synths, giant melodies and luscious harmonics, Daft Punk’s smoothest album can keep you up all night in the zero gravity disco and still grooving as the twin suns rise on the horizon. It’s got Giorgio Moroder and Nile Rodgers on it, and it sounds like something the Bee Gees might have concocted locked on a space station orbiting around Saturn with Kraftwerk. OK, the lyrics are nothing special, but sometimes even a paranoid android just wants to Get Lucky. In our wildest dreams, we’re trying to find a bridge between Daft Punk and Leonard Cohen on speed, only with more guitars. Mars needs guitars, you know. And so does Earth.
Easy Star All-Stars: Dub Side of the Moon
When you asked for our five favourite albums, all hell broke loose in Limbo. We’re taking the collected works of the Beatles and Bob Dylan as a given. Our drummer and sound desk maestro, Limbo-Z, insists the Stereo MCs Connected is a neglected masterpiece of 90s druggy bliss, our multi-instrumentalist wizard Limbo-Y keeps banging on about the cosmic genius of Sun Ra and vocalist and wordsmith Limbo-X has locked himself in a cupboard clutching a battered copy of Leonard Cohen’s The Future. And what about REM (Automatic For the People), U2 (Achtung Baby), Radiohead (The Bends), Queens of the Stone Age (Songs for the Dead), Arctic Monkeys (AM and Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino), The National (High Violet), Arcade Fire (Reflektor) and all the alt rock heroes whose blend of guitars and songcraft have inspired the Limbonauts over the years? But we can all agree on the satisfying brilliance of this 2003 madcap recreation of Pink Floyd’s prog rock masterpiece as a dub reggae trip. It flows with stoned psychedelic beauty, carrying emotional weight on its twisting journey from the space beat of Breathe through the philosophical warp of Time and Money to the emotional release of Brain Damage and Eclipse, only with added Rastafarian madness. Also highly recommended: Dubber Side of the Moon from 2010. Babylon is still burning, baby, up here on the dark side of this lonely old moon.
