22 June 2020

Band: Mekons
Who: British/American post-punk legends formed in 1976 and still going
strong after all these years expanding their sound with different genres
Album: Exquisite – their umpteenth LP, written and recorded while being
in isolation and released out of the blue without any promo.
Available only via Bandcamp
Released: 19 June 2020

About the record’s title and recording process: In Paris, in 1925, Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp invented a game they called ‘cadavre exquis,’ derived from a phrase that came up when they first played: ‘le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau’ (‘the exquisite corpse will drink the new wine’). Basically each collaborator adds
to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see only
the end of what the previous person contributed. In the current plague year 2020, after a planned rendezvous in Valencia was necessarily cancelled, mekons adopted this method
as a means of collectively assembling lyrics and tunes and recording their new album.

The band said: “While we look toward a worse economic depression than the Thirties,
scanning our eyes toward the horizon of annihilation, take joy while you can from falling statues and well, you just might be tired from having to take to the streets: What better
time to settle down with a fancy hydroxychloroquine cocktail, mainline some bleach
and dig the Mekons’ new surrealist sounds?”

Keywords: multifaceted sonic work, dub reggae, gripping lullabies,
folk jingles, country echoes, The Pogues, overall exquisite record!
Key tracks: Escalera /West Yorks Ballad / The Inhuman / Buried Treasure /
What I Believe At Night

Stream/buy EXQUISITE here…

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MEKONS: Facebook