Hawks

Obviously 5 Believers

Label: Seventeen Records

Genre: 80s Wave / Rock / Pop / Punk

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LP €24.99

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After years of negotiations finally the release of the Hawks album featuring the combined talents of Paul Adams, Simon Colley, Dave Twist, Dave Kusworth, Stephen Duffy. History tells us that every once in a while, a group of people can come together with one dream and do beautiful things with it, burning brightly but too briefly before sputtering out. But just because history throws up acloud of white noise, that dream doesn’t necessarily have to die.We know that Stephen Duffy had been a founder of Duran Duran, one of a number of bands to emerge on Birmingham’s fertile, exciting and often confusing post-punk scene. When TV Eye, the Second City’s Stooges-inspired garage punk band split, Daves Twist (drums) and Kusworth (guitar) and Paul Adams (guitar) approached Duffy (vocals) and Simon Colley (bass) from that first Duran line-up to join their new project. So began Obviously Five Believers, who in turn became The Subterranean Hawks, before settling on The Hawks. Adored by most who saw them, they recorded constantly, spawning one highly collectable single, ‘Words Of Hope’. They lasted from ’79 until Christmas ’81 “falling apart in a myriad of acrimony,” as Duffy wrote in 1984. “Success makes the best excuses and the Subterranean Hawks had none... They proved that it was impossible and implausible to be a rock'n'roll band in the eighties.”

Impossible, perhaps, in a city that never developed the support networks, the label entrepreneurs, of a Manchester, Liverpool or Sheffield –but The Hawks undoubtably had most of the signifiers already in place for the ‘Scene In Between’ that would emerge later that decade.Years passed with the various members each finding degrees of success: Duffy solo, and with the Lilac Time; Kusworth with Nikki Sudden and numerous other bands, often alongside current Black Bomber Twist. In 2019, when Duffy and Kusworth last met, Duffy, as custodian of The Hawks’ ‘tape archive’, promised that the recordings would one day be released. Sadly this was not soon enough for Kusworth who tragically passed away suddenly in September last year. Duffy has remained as good as his word, however, in bringing these ten songs to release, in honour of his friend. Having languished on cassette for 40 years, they’re now set free, sounding the best they’ve done since the day they were recorded, thanks to the judicious mastering of Grammy-winning engineer John Paterno. Dedicated to Kusworth’s memory, Obviously 5 Believers is the sound of five nineteen-year-olds from Birmingham setting out to change the world. ‘Twas ever thus.They were the perfect group. They had everything save for a parcel of good luck. If there were any justice the Hawks would be one of the most revered groups on planet earth. But this world is corrupt and the accolades and laurels they deserved never fell their way. They were such a great band. Possibly the best unknown band the world has ever seen.

The Death Of Meaning is the translated rendering of the new Gnod album’s title, and this also reflects its creation. As Paddy Shine of Gnod notes: “I think the title sums it up well because this album was coming together at a time when confusion was king for us all - still is. I think we can all relate to that. This record is a really strange beast because of the big change that happened between mixing and recording. I think the title really does sum up the vibe of ‘What the Fuck’? Maybe we should have called it that!” Wielding the taut, stripped-down and bludgeoning sound that had evolved on 2017’s Just Say No The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine and 2018’s Chapel Perilous, Gnod initially recorded the tracks for La Mort Du Sens around the Christmas period of 2019. Nonetheless, the arrival of the pandemic took the record on another course, adding to a turbulent and cathartic vitality that electrifies the likes of the caustic Melvins-in-hell assault of ‘Pink Champagne Blues’ and the post-punk angularity of ‘The Whip And The Tongue’ with a fearsome elemental charge. Masters of an approach which manages to be both unmistakeable and unpredictable. Gnod are now well established as prophets of the dispossessed. La Mort Du Sens is no less than another relentlessly invigorating stop[1]off on their wild ride to who knows where. “Got No Obvious Destination, innit”