It once happened in that country (and this seems indeed strange) that a living creature was caught in the forest as to which no one could say definitely whether it was a man or some other animal, for no one could get a word from it or be sure that it understood human speech. It had the human shape, however, in every detail, both as to hands and face and feet, but the entire body was covered with hair as the beasts are.
Taken from the Old Norse text Konungs Skuggsjá (1250)
The Best Light Is The Last Light is the new EP from woodland agitators Snapped Ankles, following their debut Leaf single ‘I Want My Minutes Back’ with something a little more substantial to get your teeth into. Since their move to the city, the woodwose have gorged on cinema and left this gleaming carcass.
The EP opens with motorik fuzz epic ‘Jonny Guitar Calling Gosta Berlin’, its title taken from Greta Garbo’s 1924 big screen debut The Saga of Gosta Berling. The track draws heavily on Jean-Luc Godard’s nightmarish Weekend, in which an excursion to the countryside ends in revolution, the collapse of bourgeois society and cannibalism. The circle of life.
What follows is a kitchen sink post-punk one-two in ‘Fukushima Failure’ and ‘Director’s Nostalgia’. Knotted and contagious. Snatched lyrics about nuclear disaster and barely coherent rants about art house cinema over clattering ramshackle rhythms that will lodge themselves deep in your brain long after the screen fades to black. Mark E. Smith is lost in the forest and picking fights with the trees. As the credits roll we’re played out with the soundtrack to some forgotten 1970s Italian road movie in ‘Wendy’s Road Rage’.
FORMATS
Vinyl
Limited edition black vinyl 12″ EP (500 copies) – DOCK 66
Digital
DOCK 66E