Lol Tolhurst x Budgie x Jacknife Lee release their much-anticipated album Los Angeles on 3rd November via Play It Again Sam. Having shared a video for the title track ‘Los Angeles‘ back in July, today the band share their addictive new single, ‘Ghosted At Home’. Featuring the unmistakable vocals of Bobby Gillespie, the track comes accompanied by an eerie video directed by Julian Gabriel Bendaña, inspired by David Lynch, Hitchcock and Chris Cunningham, with the band filming themselves on ring doorbell cameras in LA and Berlin. Listen and watch HERE.
Commenting on the track Jacknife Lee says: “This was our attempt at soundtracking Polanski’s ‘Repulsion’ if Serge Gainsbourg and Can were among the musicians playing along with us. We got a groove and improvised over it and ended up with this. We were aiming for a sense of claustrophobia that Bobby skilfully picked up on when we sent him the track. This is another example of how in tune we were with our collaborators on the album even though we were sometimes separated from them.”
Lol Tolhurst says: “The first sound you hear on ‘Ghosted at Home’ is also the first recording we made together in the sacred area of Yosemite, and with it, we attached all our hopes and expectations for the music we were making. It seemed appropriate that the first instrument we played in the forest for our record was also the most ancient – a drum.”
Budgie adds: “In life it is rare to hear someone telling their story and for us to recognize it as our own. It is rarer still when that story relates to a complex, dangerous and psychologically damaging relationship. To induce this feeling of empathy is perhaps the gift and skill of a great lyricist and writer. Bobby Gillespie is one of those writers.”
The three-way Los Angeles collaborative long-player was born out of a curiosity which just wouldn’t die. Made up of two of the most illustrious and inventive drummers of the post-punk era, The Cure’s Lol Tolhurst, and Budgie from Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Creatures, along with stellar producer and multi-instrumentalist Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee, this unlikely alt-supergroup have spent the last four years spiriting up one of the most extraordinary albums to appear in 2023. Perusing the tracklist, with its guest credits for, amongst others, James Murphy, Bobby Gillespie, The Edge, Civil Rights avant-gardist Lonnie Holley, Mary Lattimore, Starcrawler wildchild Arrow de Wilde and Mark Bowen from IDLES, you may rightly wonder just what the 13-track long-player holds in store.
The answer: a hard-hitting and compulsively exploratory 55-minute electronic headfuck, founded on unrivalled rhythmic expertise, fleshed out with an armoury of synths, guitars (Jacknife’s forté) and supplementary percussion, often overlaid with elite-class strings and brass, then universally twisted, manipulated and quite masterfully sculpted by Lee, with his super-producer’s hat on.
Hear ‘Ghosted At Home feat. Bobby Gillespie’ on streaming services here and watch the video below.
