Pigeons, The - Bird Brain Gang '2023

Tracks list

The London-based power trio present Bird Brain Gang, a debut album
that’ll make you coo. It’s an airborne riot of block covering
beats, bird feed-back, beak poetry and squelchy, white sonic discharge. These
creatures of dubious habit offer a psychedelic bird’s eye view of the
world, with eleven new tracks that will undoubtedly leave their mark.
“We got together a few years back for the occasional show to play very
loud, improvised, confrontational rock wearing pigeon masks,” explains
Phil

Pigeon, who never expected to be writing songs for a band called The Pigeons.
“We saw it as a side-project to our other professional pursuits, a random
reason to meet up, get loaded and raise sonic hell.” In a previous
incarnation, Phil MFU was responsible for “strange sounds” in the
lauded
pop quintet Vanishing Twin.
Sonically, The Pigeons are a more confrontational unit, driven by Tommy
Pigeon’s scattergun drumming, which drives The Pigeons like Clyde
Stubblefield drove James Brown and, ergo, old skool hip hop: “Tommy
Pigeon's ever-changing rhythms and impactful drive informed a lot of the
compositional flow of the record,” says Phil.
The album looks back to an idealised London before gentrification destroyed the
capital’s edge, property developers turned all the great venues into
expensive flats for non-domiciled oligarchs to snap up, and before the
establishment attempted to drive all of the pigeons out of Trafalgar Square:
“We wanted to echo the old scenes of London from the past: sixties beat
and seventies punk... I arrived here in 1986, just at the very end of the punk
and new wave scenes, but that vibrancy was still around and in the air.
I’ve found myself pining for other Londons of the past. It was all much
more rock and roll than it is now, especially since Brexit and Covid.”
Phil Pigeon fancied a flutter with the sounds from the gutter: “I’m
normally known for electronic outer space music and it’s my first time
singing and playing guitar.” On top of distorted stabs from the steel
strings, comes the influence of seventies library music, and avant-garde
godfather Karlheinz Stockhausen too (“for the figurative musical gestures
and timing... I love early sci-fi electronics mixed with rock,” enthuses
Phil.)
On top of the squalling electronics and shapeshifting samples, come tales of the
unexpected, each as surprising as a splat in the eye. Take ‘Amanda
Feilding’, for instance, written about the LSD-endorsing Queen of
Consciousness (dubbed by the New Scientist, no less), who Phil describes as
“very punk”. Feilding campaigned for widespread trepanation across
the nation, and claimed to have a telepathic relationship with her pigeon,
Birdy.
“When researching pigeons for lyrical subject matter, stumbling across
this amazing character who had a love affair with a pigeon was pure gold,”
says Phil. “The song is from the pigeon’s perspective, the bass
guitar playing like a tuba marching band, the beat of the pigeon's heart, the
guitar, the wild ruffling of feathers...” He goes on: “As a
psychedelic rock musician, the fact that Amanda has devoted her life to the
study of psychedelics and now has a very successful research centre devoted to
the study of it just adds another very rich level.”
Other highlights include ‘Take Aim’ and ‘Spikes’,
written by Phil and Jimmy respectively. The former says: “I was surprised
by how many bird-related themes we could come up with.” It all bodes well
for a future torrent of emissions, naturally made to ordure: “I've been
studying about a pigeon in World War Two who won a medal of honour for flying
several missions across the channel to deliver messages. His code name was
N.U.R.P.38.EGU.242. Sounds like a possible future punk prog track.” Watch
this space, and get ready for The Pigeons. The excellent, effluent Bird Brain
Gang is about to drop. You’re guano love it!

Tracklist:
1.01 - The Pigeons - Sideways Stare (2:17)
1.02 - The Pigeons - Bird Brain Gang (2:28)
1.03 - The Pigeons - Amanda Fielding (2:02)
1.04 - The Pigeons - Pigeon Rock (1:50)
1.05 - The Pigeons - The Pigeon 1000 Super Music Computer (3:59)
1.06 - The Pigeons - Pecking At The Pavement (2:34)
1.07 - The Pigeons - Iron Bird (1:10)
1.08 - The Pigeons - Take Aim (3:52)
1.09 - The Pigeons - Spikes (3:56)
1.10 - The Pigeons - Angry Little Circles (3:25)
1.11 - The Pigeons - Master Disaster (5:14)

Related artists