Buñuel are Eugene S. Robinson from Oxbow, Pierpaolo Capovilla and Franz Valente from One Dimensional Man, Il Teatro Degli Orrori and Xabier Iriondo from Afterhours. They have just released their second album and it ‘fashions a world in decline that is taking us along with it.’ Fighting Boredom have been listening and are impressed to say the least
I left the house earlier with my hair immaculate, bequiffed and cool, my best suit and a wallet full of wages. I’m now lying in a gutter with the rain falling, broken glass under my feet and blood in my mouth. The music playing is a primal, swamp filled bastard blues fug and it’s all perfect. The other band that Eugene S. Robinson sings for created Fighting Boredom’s album of the year for 2017, and the performance of the Oxbow Choir was hard to beat live too. But this is something else. Something bloody, bruised and stricken.
The three musicians details read like a who’s who of the Italian music scene, they have played across the world and made music for years. This is the second record from Buñuel and it’s a brutal, gnarly masterpiece. Strong words, but I’ve listened to an awful lot of music and trust me, sometimes I’m right. The moment in‘Boys To Men’ after Eugene has carefully inserted his almost incoherent vocal over the slow deliberate music for the first three quarters of the song, you struggle to catch what the words are, and you know that’s on purpose, the moment after that, when it goes dead quiet but for a lost guitar whine; four drum beats hit and the blues riff from hell erupts and scrawls itself across your retinas with Eugine howling behind, that is the moment you realise that this one’s a keeper, this one’s for real.
The rest of the album’s no sweeter. It’s like the musical equivalent of a fist fight, lurching, exhausting and very very loud. The equivalent would maybe have been The Birthday Party in full, wiped out, molten flow, but they are long lost to a sea of drugs and time. Buñuel are here right now and making a different glorious mess that you need to play louder than you can imagine. This may well be my album of the year. I just know that at the moment I’m finding it difficult to listen to anything else. Brutally brilliant.
