Witch Hats: raw cellulite soul

Thu 7th Feb, 2008 in Local News

Rummaging through the bones of 60s pop, late 70s post-punk, 80s and 90s noise rock, Melbourne four piece Witch Hats, are the ideal antidote to a world that celebrates the vacuous pursuits of the celebrity classes, cheap corporate rhetoric and the disposable lifestyle.

It’s the follow up to their highly acclaimed 2006 EP Wound of a Little Horse and the release of their 7” single ‘Before I Weigh’, the single lifted from the album late 2007.

Witch Hats released its debut EP, Wound of a Little Horse, in 2006 on In-Fidelity Recordings. Quickly gathering local and national notoriety for their fuzz – œn’ swamp drenched live attack, Witch Hats returned to the studio in 2007 with Ben Ling and Phill Calvert.

The result of this astonishing moment of studio alchemy is Cellulite Soul, Witch Hats’ debut album. Raw, primitive and compelling, Cellulite Soul is the sound of the vulgar reality that seethes beneath the thin veneer of humanity. The album features their unique sonic: a frenzy of sex noises, papercuts to the tongue and electrified, ozone melting howls.

It’s the sound that falls upwards. Tomas P Barry’s desperate, eager guitar fondling generates a holy noise. Ash Buscombe’s rumbling bass throws sticky giant sundew tentacles at the listener, working in sleazy concert with the cannibal snap of Duncan Blachford’s urban voodoo drum patterns. Floating above it all Kris Buscombe whispers the vulgarity and howls the righteous violence: the mundane is a tyrant, here for all to see.

The first single, ‘Before I Weigh’, lures the listener in to the album itself with a strangely coherent narrative of mesmerising quality. And once you’re in, there’s no going back. ‘Climbing Up Yr Cable’ is pop in its finest sludged-out guise and Western slashes with precision at the dysfunction around us, chopping it to raw, quivering bits. The narrative of ‘Potato Feet’ is variously amusing, disturbing and threatening, while Doors Film expands from a disposable pop cultural reference into a surging churn of sonic philosophy that will bend your mind inside out.

Cellulite Soul is the album you’ve been waiting to hear, and it’s even better than you expected. Go forth and join the Witch Hats journey.

Cellulite Soul is available through Infidelity Recordings.