Coming July 22 : James Arthur’s Manhunt – Digital Clubbing LP (12XU 083-1)
This album isn’t centuries in the making. It just feels like it. In reality, the first full-length album from James Arthur’s Manhunt since 2010’s ‘Manhunt’ (Aarght!) is a crazed, yet shockingly coherent career highlight for a guy whose excursions into guitar chaos in a variety of guises/cities would’ve incapacitated lesser men. Or women. In fact, I think it has incapacitated lesser men and women, but enough about the audience.
(photo by Ángel Delgado Reyes)
For those who don’t know, guitarist/vocalist James Arthur has marked his territory in places as far flung as Brisbane, Memphis and Austin, TX. It’s been in the Texas capitol where he’s taken hard life-lessons-learned from tenures in such legendary outfits as The Necessary Evils, C.C. Riders, New Memphis Legs, The Reatards, A Fest Of Snakes, Fireworks and the Golden Boys…and ignored all of ’em, instead vomiting into the face of adulthood with a decidedly volatile red-white-and-boo-fucking-hoo take on what some people like to call “space rock”. What would Hawkwind sound like if you owed them money (or they were locked out of the house?). Let’s hope we never find out.
(photo by Ángel Delgado Reyes)
All kidding aside, after one LP and a succession of singles for the In The Red, Goodbye Boozy, Perpetrator and Spacecase labels, James was somehow able to RECORD THE UNRECORDABLE. Under the technical supervision of Stuart Sikes (who as an actual Grammy Award (TM) winner really ought to know better), and bolstered by Texas conspirators including Bryan Schmitz (the Golden Boys), Orville Neeley (OBN III’s, Bad Sports) and Sean Morales (Ichi Ni San Shi), ‘Digital Clubbing’ is the Manhunt record that accurately documents the total sickness that is the band’s (better than) average live show, yet improbably brings it all into focus for brief enough flashes that it all hangs together as a very sticky, sweaty classic.
Preorder ‘Digital Clubbing’ at 12XU.bigcartel.com