other titles...
See also...
- BLACK COUNTRY GOTHIC
- I MOCK JOGGERS
- DESPERATE BREAKFAST
- SHITHOUSE
- THIS HERE AIN’T WATER
- MY SHAPE (BLOCKING THE LIGHT)
- BLACK DOG WHITE HORSE
- BROADCAST: TIME AWAY
- iLL.
- MONGREL
- BUTCHER’S BIN
- DUST OFF START AGAIN
- TREES
- FOR THE BIRDS
- DiG!
BIG SPECIAL
POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES
so recordings
Big tip if you dug last year's Benefits' rumpus - Big Special plough a similar furrow, barking their rage over fried out industrial stomps, pulsing electronics, and guitar barrages but, you know what? They've also got a taste for earworm melodies, threading them soulfully through the greyscale clobbering.
Words are not to be taken for granted; especially when they’re being bellowed, full blast, by a broad-shouldered poet with the brimstone fire of a preacher and the honesty and wisdom of a layman, over ground-shaking live beats and between anthemic blasts of melody and rousing riffage. Words matter. History matters. People matter. And BIG SPECIAL matter.
For BIG SPECIAL - Joe Hicklin (vocals) and Callum Moloney (drums) - their sound is one that comes from vital, frustrated young working-class voices that don’t always get heard on the scale they should do. It’s a frustration that comes to the fore through a voice that is at times coarse and raw, but sensitive, desperate and soulful at others. Hicklin's brimstone-fired voice marches from guttural punk barks and serrated spoken word to soaring soul and back again, arriving siphoned from their forebears, crushed under the weight of history, and retooled for a new generation. It’s wrought, raw and angry at a world lacking options, the thinning of the common understanding between the social classes of England, exasperation at repeating cycles, and the feeling that you’re watching your own life unfold from the outside.