The Scaramanga Six released GLUT, the first of a planned pair of albums marking the band’s 30th anniversary, a couple of months back. A typical wonderful maximalist rock affair, you can read our review of the LP here. Its counterpart DEARTH was originally expected hot on its heels, but the band have decided to to spend a little more time getting it just right, so we’ll have to wait until October for its unveiling. Fans of The Six needn’t be disheartened however, as they’ve taken three tracks originally intended for DEARTH and teamed them up with GLUT highlight ‘Bad Time Music’ for a stonking interim EP.
We’re delighted to bring you vocalist/bassist Steven Morricone’s thoughts on each of the tracks, along with a first look at the video for its title track, which eschews the AI splatter madness of the album’s other videos for a rather more organically chaotic live performance.
BAD TIME MUSIC
We’ve already harped on about this one in our GLUT track-by-track article a few months ago, but in brief this song is about the curse of being the office rocker & more specifically making the mistake of telling a bunch of entrepreneurs in a business networking event that you ‘play in a band’. Rather than the expected feelgood rock cover content of ‘Sex on Fire/Mr Brightside’ insipidness, you have to instead try to explain that you’d rather make confusing, confrontational and (shock horror) overtly uncommercial noise of your own miserable concoction. This tune has emerged as a mildly popular highlight of our live set of late.
The promo video is a bit of a modern-day anomaly in that it contains absolutely no AI elements whatsoever! Good news for those dead set against such technology, but very bad news for those that have to watch it and witness the unfettered decrepitude of an increasingly aging bunch of rock musicians goofing about. Just add an ‘R’ to the front of ‘age’ and you have us in a nutshell.
These days we operate on the principle of being in the same place at the same time for the absolute least amount time possible. This means that we often consolidate multiple rock chores concurrently. During the shooting of the ‘Bad Time Music’ vid, we also shot two other promos, did a photo session and had a buffet (there HAS to be a buffet at every full band liaison). We did a couple of run-throughs to limber up, our Gareth on drums managed to get a ‘fire drill’ in during the first gap in the song and then we were off the leash like a pack of frisky labradors. Just because you are miming to nobody in the back of an old mill, it doesn’t mean that you have to tone down the theatrics in any way. Irrespective of the situation, we always aim to perform as if it were the very last opportunity. Our Paul, who also directed and edited this video, wanted to capture just that.
Marvel at our supple athleticism here:
THEMS THE LAWS
‘LAWS’ is an acronym for Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems – a lucrative opportunity that features in many a CEO’s personal investment portfolio it seems. If the returns are good enough, who cares where the capital goes, eh? If you are able to stream/listen to any music on demand for a pittance, who cares if more of that subscription ultimately goes on dodgy investments like this than back to the ‘content creator’? Who cares that the content creators have blatantly ripped off Richard Hell and the Flying Lizards? Who cares about this stupid EP? Who cares? Who? W? ?
SALTED CARAMEL
My mother-in-law lives in Florida, USA and so me and my family try to get over there as often as circumstances will allow, to visit and trapse around the theme parks of Orlando. Now I don’t mean to sound ungrateful (privilege should be checked on a daily basis), but there really is only so much of the dichotomy of Disney’s saccharine veneer and gross social inequality you can take. The States is potentially a very dangerous place to be with evidently a huge epidemic of ignorance at its heart. I recall seeing a feller walking around the Magic Kingdom wearing a T-shirt with the logo ‘Guns don’t kill people, Idiots do’. This song encapsulates a fascination with the place combined with an attempt to make a progressive 80’s disco rock opus.
RUSSIAN DOLLS
A rare foray into the kind of macabre subject matter that used to be more prevalent in our work. Our Paul was reading up on the story of Anatoly Moskvin, a quiet Russian historian who built up a collection of mummified female cadavers as companions, and decided as you do to put it into song. We’ve wrapped this story up in a building thrum of bolero percussion, analogue synth and trembling guitars before it gallops off in an ELP-style shuffle.
If you or anyone you know have been affected by any of the issues raised in this EP, then please contact us via our helpline for heartfelt support.