Can Kicker: Yew – Interview & Album Evaluate

Can Kicker: Yew

Self-released

DL

Out January 23

Undefeated. Depressing. A warrior with out tongue. Wolfpack bored of blood. Out of the shadows. One thing grows across the creature throughout the deep terror of this tree hole: thickly encased in layers of what has been endured, able to be swallowed, earlier than rising solely enlightened, scars nonetheless beneath, however the enlarged panorama from the place it stands is immensely empowering. As a result of love fails to lose itself within the throng of the maelstrom. The second album from Cardiff’s Can Kicker, Yew, likes to remind us how and why. Interview and overview with Luke P. by Ryan Walker.

What will get up right here, stretches, and spits out the style of a stressed night time, lights a shakingly rolled cigarette, and stubs it out with a coach missing any soles? What was deemed punishable sufficient to stick with breaking via, with belonging to nobody? Simply what grows right here?

In opposition to the indignity of nature, but in addition absorbed by its impossible-to-ignore plights and occasional glimmers of acceptance – a ultimate feat appeased by succumbing to contradiction and claiming it as our personal, cradled by it, crushed by it: innocence grows right here. Its epitaph is similar slate that fronts this very album. The slate is a press release. The slate is an area. The slate is a sword. A toddler grows right here, too. In addition to dies. Together with innocence. Trauma bleeds its means again to the fateful steps from which the seed was sown: ”That is to be the place of your beginning. Shut up. But by no means be silenced. Get on with it.” The instinctual twitch cuts flesh to ribbons. The define of a light projection nonetheless smoulders in a form our scars run far too thick to hide with any cognitive methods, bandage wraps or leisure addictions. Scars assist us stand on our personal two toes.

A plea for elsewhere. Some place else. Wherever else. Aside from the place it presently sits however retains sufficient dignity to not come throughout as some whiney, adolescent racket or determined, existentially-intimidated diary entry, Yew is an immense razor of claustrophobic magnificence: the bitter capsule and the gorgeous view – the previous to persuade us down right here ain’t half dangerous regardless of pressured every day to gaze into the imposing monument the latter stands as. There’s a lot extra substance for us to sink into, much more so when it glares at us like canine eyes in the dead of night, about to snap.

The outdated pores and skin is shed, and one thing else hatches from its again. It is perhaps a brand new self, a brand new set of circumstances, a brand new view looming forward: transition. Or is it about accepting the inevitability that every one issues in life are constructed with duality: as a lot because the steadiness between love and hate, darkness and light-weight, hiding and discovering a means ahead? ”Each most likely,” says singer Luke. ”We’re going someplace – unsure the place precisely, hopefully someplace higher finally. However yeah, we’re solely doing it via dualities and contradictions. Feeling our means within the darkness. I believe we’re actually going to wish one another over the subsequent years, reestablishing human-to-human interactions, away from the platforms and all the opposite shit which appears to get in the way in which. Constructing a brand new world, higher collectively than alone.”

The album happened when Luke started to pen some tunes in the summertime of 2021/22. ”By way of the way it happened, I simply write songs and produce them to follow,” he states, and symbolically, with the winter recordings going down in ‘23 by their good friend Alice Low in Bristol, in the identical studio as their first album was one in now however sadly flattened and unveiled into a fancy of luxurious lodging (the destiny of many studios, artwork and workspaces throughout the nation), this album mirrors that temper – issues knocked down, however the resilience of the inventive underground stays assured sufficient to carve a means via the crap. ”Once we’re there we simply mess about and everybody begins writing their very own components, or generally components are written considerably collaboratively. As soon as it’s trying like we’ve obtained sufficient tunes for an album we simply go into the studio once more.”

Opener Youngster channels all of that rage right into a six-minute goth storm. The ”human to human” exchanges exist inside ourselves. Make peace with the interior enemy and the world will redesign itself accordingly. A world of ‘dry grass able to burn’, a world inside which people are witnessed ‘holding onto the perfect’ as we, shadows of our former selves, return to the swamp that spat us, ‘sharing a room, with a frightened youngster’ Luke sings over the identical brooding chug, the identical spool of caustic chords spiral and whirl like fragments in the dead of night nook of that very room. It’s a mutilated sonic dirge ripping via the night time like a lake of motor oil. City, asphalt atmosphere. Forwards. Sooner, Cariad (Welsh for ‘love’ or ‘affection’) beats a imply beat: vocals gasping for air the extra they gorge within the mic – a shit mic, the one mic in sight. Repetition unleashed is one hell of a vengeful weapon. It crashes and glides with rhythmic depth. The title monitor boils up and bounces with chaotic attraction and drama, nearly levitating the extra it vibrates with the push of unsettling drones, scorching penetration and fervent telepathy.

Out from the weeds, out from the winds, Yew is a report resplendent with magic and light-weight, prayer and motion, oblivion and worry. It swings from the hinges of transition, contradiction coursing via its veins like {an electrical} present of ungodly turbulence and direct voltage that would energy up a telecommunications website and broadcast the life endured, the experiences absorbed, the torturous pictures harboured throughout distant lands. An album of affection’s determined masks. An album of hate’s favorite knuckleduster (and vice versa). That is the long-form follow-up to the self-titled album from 2022, however the writing course of has been something however stagnant, and no matter has modified, no matter could have been endured, has been embraced by the band in a means that weaves, pins and uppercuts its auratic affect all through the report in a means which is concurrently frenzied, but delicate. ”It’s arduous to say, because the writing course of didn’t actually cease’’ explains Luke. ”Proper after we recorded Can Kicker, most likely earlier than even, I used to be penning this report. Lots occurred throughout that point of writing the 2 information – some actually good things but in addition lots of actually arduous stuff. I believe there’s most likely extra good things in Yew.”

Though recorded in Bristol, which seeped into the psyche of the band, again in Cardiff the place this was written, an important wave of turbulence was endured that pressured the bones of the songs to solidify themselves into some form of sanctum, an aural structure away from the volatility of the world round him. Security in songs. Yeah, there was turbulence in my life for certain,’’ he confirms. ”I used to be transferring round lots, partly somewhere else in Cardiff, partly in a caravan by the woods close to Penallt and a brief stint in Vancouver. It was a time of huge highs and lows. I believe most of my writing is a few type of world-building to both escape or perceive.”

What of the wrestle that necessitates a fantasy with sufficient fortitude to guard the self from additional spouts of injury? Is that this interior wrestle retaliating towards one thing else on the within, or does it put together to go to warfare with exterior entrapments and evils? Much like the purity of the report as being an trustworthy portrait of a second because it unfolds, ”being a human or simply feeling on this fucked up world” points the same state of purity: purity poisoned sufficient to spew itself up into one thing new, expelling the recent toxins from the stream. ”I believe I are inclined to focus extra on the interior or the form of states of thoughts our present state of affairs can get us wrapped up in,” Luke states. ”Alienation, disconnection, and so forth. But in addition the opposites – I believe this report focuses extra on love and connection than our first.”

With Yew, quite than the band setting their sights for any apparent changes or motivational intentions this time round – some plotted ambition that wished to be completed, a paradigm to ensure the report has no selection besides to be what that preliminary imaginative and prescient entailed, the report is considered one of purity. ”I believe the intention has at all times been simply to be ourselves and make music genuine to us. That sounds cliché however hey,” Luke confirms.

However not eager to make it sound like nothing has modified, for musically, issues are shrouded in additional murkiness, grabs of sounds splitting aside, suggestions from blacksmith yards colliding via the soupy din, finally diving instantly into one’s core the extra there may be to wade via like a river of set honey or moist concrete, whether or not or not we’re alone, whether or not or not we’re after misplaced. ”Wanting again, it feels this time we moved a bit away from the punk aspect of issues, to discover different areas extra. We listened to Songs of Reward by African Head Cost each day earlier than recording” he provides.

Certainly- a dub model of the tracks can be a really fascinating companion piece. All snatches of broadcasts from the previous or current to make us take into consideration the longer term. A mumble and a pulse. One of many soundscapes and sandbag drums echoing into the wilderness from whence they got here. One of many occasional scraping chains of a guitar dipping out and in of focus. But, the leftovers of Look Your self – a stabbing dance of deformed joint chords, basement mud hissing below the toes of one thing unnerving unloading as touches of rumble and rasp cling within the air heavier than the benefit at which its varied limbs twitch with intimate, airless eccentricity are pulled out of it. It strikes in jerks. A bleak, dystopian dub disco climax, each sucked via and spat outwards from – a no man’s land.

However such eerie spells of atmosphere, offset and intensified by taut flames, chants of fearless lamentation and abrupt interruptions of primitive rhythms that cyclically underpin the entire motion are definitely formidable sufficient to maintain issues experimental and embellished with sufficient intrigue to fulfill some type of experimental itch. One thing summoned up from hazy, dub-encrusted bunkers. A bootleg from belowground. A recorder hid within the again pocket of a pair of outdated denims. A wall away from contact. A sequence of tracks tucked away on a uncommon cassette tape.

Beginning in 2020 after Luke had wished to jot down and sing in a punk group for a while, however ”not overly sure by style,” the preliminary imaginative and prescient for the group was, while oscillating from, and skirting between a love of people, nation, experimental music in addition to references to post-punk and anarcho subcultures, to roughly hybridize Disaster, Neil Younger and Rikk Agnew. Whether or not that’s what he obtained, or whether or not that’s what individuals contemplate this album to be, is inconsequential. By means of mates, Quick and Jo stay within the group, with Danny climbing aboard a bit later after Emma departed for London. With a follow only a fortnight earlier than the primary lockdown hit- the band have come a great distance.

Someplace between Wire and UK Decay, someplace between Unhealthy Breeding and the Banshees, someplace between the Remedy and Battle featured on a Bullshit Detector compilation, Turning into surges a bestial, brooding torrent. All palpitating bass drum kicking from its pit, all splintered guitars with reels of concertina razor wire crawling out the corners of its mouth in a riot of noise that peels the rot of all partitions, all crucified vocal holler, as a stranger from the unconsciousness of the astral grime emerges to recite the war-torn folklore to whoever will hear, sat across the spirit’s final flickering campfires on the opposite aspect because the lingering stench of blood-stained shrapnel fizzes and glistens in a heap of insurmountable, machine riffage. ”Within the studio, I believe we tried to get the recording a bit extra settled and fewer mad than our earlier efforts,” Luke remembers. ”We at all times report reside, so this was primarily simply isolating the amp for the lead guitar in a vocal sales space. Sometimes Quick opened the sales space whereas we have been recording for suggestions.”

However don’t be deceived by the concept of ”extra settled” or ”much less mad.” Refuse To See unveils the view behind the smokescreen. A swarm of oldsters who fell via their very own reflections. Discovered years later in a spot the place under metropolis, under toes, under timber, under consciousness: one other world should be suitably ignored earlier than the entire movement image replays itself once more, simply as clearly because it was the primary thousand runs, however we stay ”simply as blinded as earlier than.” Drums ruining themselves, operating out of area, so resolve to create extra by consuming via each floor in sight as whisperings of feral guitars like a feral scratch via to the floor. Wrapped up in inside struggling and self-compassion, against exterior repression and outward resistance, its amphetamine-inhaling comrade explodes on It’s Not Going Away, a blitzkrieg of disjointed punk mania. Moodier issues abound in Half Asleep Half Awake that completely the album’s spirit is ensnared by the very phrase caught between sentience, and slumber: paralysis. It shatters with each skull-splitting cymbal bleed, bass kick and guitar scrape that breaks into fragments, chiming towards the cages of business wreckage that sees actuality, a reproduction of a lie lengthy advised to the purpose that it’s broadly accepted as an inscrutable, ideological axle shaking within the rain, ringing the bell, with no one house to reply. But, ”have we ceased to care?” it questions.

Right here’s a report simmering, and shimmering with texture – arduous to hint, distorted but at all times succeeds in instantly dropping itself between the eyeballs, thudding via the guts, breaking via its sound barrier. It conjures issues up and crashes in with some darkish, magic energy – uncooked, however full-bodied and ominous, and subsequently – a lineage between the impenetrable, unprecedented indentation of their beloved DIY collectives – fashioned to quash the boredom, to interrupt the spell – and in a crackle of vinyl static, disband earlier than the moment offers up. The vibe in Bristol, that unpolished chaos, that bare element was excellent to create Yew because it lives and breathes right here. ”The vibe?” queries Luke. ”There was this form of horrifying tunnel close to the studio stuffed with junk, buddleia and shit like that. I keep in mind we have been strolling out and in of it lots to get booze or different necessities. I believe after establishing the mics we went out for a bit after which recorded just about the entire report in an hour or two on one night time.”

Though, with a penchant for capturing as trustworthy an image of the band as potential, some experimentation, some slowness, creeps into the ethers. By means of the tunnel, traversing all of the horrors on the varied stalls and shutters that populate this path, from the sodium glow of the comfort retailer to the studio, Capability bursts aside as a crucial instance of how vocals can lower throughout like a one-way dialog with nothing besides the bare-naked partitions they (band/he/Luke) is encased in. Numbed by despondency. Exhausted. Gone. Incommunicative but on the cusp of combustion. Nearer to a penultimate crysallis. An instance of how the band can interlock and groove and entice one another’s presence right into a psychic craze with out dropping the impetus of what makes rock hauntingly darkish, maddeningly hypnotic and beguilingly menacing. It yawns in chains. It breaks free.

Adorning the album’s cowl is a chunk of slate. With font and stonework by Morgan Owain Edwards and {photograph} by Leuan Morris, there’s a way of the album’s psychic element as possessing an immense weight – bodily rooted and rotten someplace however, regardless of one’s finest efforts, can’t be faraway from the spot: the concept of slate and uncarved blocks, the concept of a tree, the concept of a burial mound deep within the woods, hysterically zigzagging throughout frequent land, the concept of crevices all through new worlds, fields and piles and ”crows, rivers, city decay and love” that additionally pours out from the rolling vistas as famous in Cariad’s earlier ”historical land aligned with the solar”. Uncertain of the place we’re. Uncertain if we’ve been right here earlier than. Uncertain if something has modified. However that is extra than simply an concept. For Can Kicker, the concept of a slate is extra akin to a way of thinking. ”One in all despair, one of many heightened contradictions and tensions we exist in,” Luke explains. ”But in addition, of the escape or the therapeutic qualities of nature, of human connection and love.”

Though produced in Bristol, Wales seeps into the unconscious watering holes of the band as an area to carry shut or push away from view. Or fuck the unconscious geographies that so vehemently infect our choices with their tentacles and roots and ghostly, lonely neon murmurings. Wales unleashes itself in a extra linguistic, violently impassioned method. A panorama affect. The slate – a darkish storm or a floor upon which to etch our fondest needs and deepest ambition, abounds in efficiency. ”It’s humorous this because it has not felt like a acutely aware affect. Which will sound odd contemplating the slate and all the pieces. I believe nature is a acutely aware affect, nevertheless. However in fact, it’s the place we reside, it’s our house,” Luke says. ”And it’s the place a lot of those that labored on the report are both from or reside. One beautiful story is the art work. Morgan who now lives in Copenhagen, purchased the slates he later etched for the art work with him from the place he’s from in Corris. Ieuan who photographed them can be from Corris. Two artists who beforehand didn’t know one another, generations other than the identical village, engaged on the identical small punk report. studying Welsh I wished to begin to use it in Can Kicker, even only a small quantity. However I don’t assume the report is about Wales essentially. There’s little doubt our environment have influenced us although. It’s simply pure I suppose.”

A toddler is born once more. Taller. Stronger. Harnesses the sick heave of the streets that encompass it. The options of its reflection are distinctly chiselled, challenged and stretched. The storm of the warfare exterior should be braved. Love is corrupted. Crying out for assist. To be cleansed and replenished by melody. The soul is a spent drive. A avenue employee attempting to make ends meet. Afraid of nature. Mates deserted. Outdated our bodies buried by new ones. Drained minds bogged all the way down to the overgrowth of time. The kid inside tries to flee. You’ll be able to hint it again to the entice from which it sprang. A few of its shirt tatteredly snagged on the claws. Able to recognise the world as a bowl of rotten fruit. To lunge and launch into the inflexible constrictions of this actuality, ready to fend for itself with what little scraps are planted deep into darkish pockets.

Alienation, disconnection, and so forth.

However love. Don’t overlook the fucking love.

~

A Yew launch present that includes Self-Immolation Music, Nation Unrest and others is on the twenty second Feb. Tickets HERE

Can Kicker | Bandcamp

Ryan Walker | Louder Than Conflict

Essential picture by Tudor Rhys Etchells ©