Savage Furs
London, England, United Kingdom | INDIE
Music
Press
An exciting record, and in its way a new sound, as a melting pot of influences spills over and spreads a crystalline gloop all its own. Currently a Psychedelic Post-Punk Electro duo of Del Jae (Crystal Wrists) and JJD (Radio Berlin) they’re looking for a guitarist and synth player. Their flyer requesting such services lists some of the influences, from Japan, Bauhaus, Eno and The Cult to Chrome, Severed Heads, Our Daughters Wedding, DAF and Jefferson Airplane. Whether that explains sufficiently why the sleek and slithery ‘Mohair Metal’ sounds like Duran Duran in their pomp turned upside down I am unsure, but that’s how mobile the sound is, and how craftily appointed vocals are. It’s a fabulous experience. Vocals are a post-Le Bon cajoling force, jabbing and punky, the guitar is elegant, the rhythmic propulsion like a prickly conveyor belt.
‘Serpents At The Hands Of Feathers’ indicates how they like their arty song titles, and the darkly sticky sound creeps steadily along, with little sonic spikes protruding, until a lazily flamboyant chorus. They have a snappy, restless quality which seems to squeeze out through its angsty surface to twirl and cavort in ecstasy. ‘Vain Torsos Severed In Two Dreams’ is more subdued, with a bovine bassline, but still through a porous cantankerous percussive trail there are diminutive, fetching arty touches dripping; axiomatic asthma which keeps their songs afloat. ‘Sick Lamborghini’ is like a saxophone-tortured take on ‘The Reflex’, the chorus struggling out and projecting upwards from a writhing base of inter-wrought fidgeting pulses and textured plates of noise. ‘Slit Of The Wolf’ offers another side to their approach because this stays low, like a subterranean Talking Heads descendant, angular in design but with the edges rounded off, and ready to roll around like some demented robot.
In ‘the old days’ labels would be racing to sign them, but of course it’s all different now. We can still, however, expect a classic debut album out of them because, as I indicated at the start, this is brilliant. - Mick Mercer
Discography
SAVAGE FURS EP (12" Vinyl/Digital), 2011
Photos
Bio
Drenched in synthesized post-punk, tough erotic rhythms and vocals echoing the dark pop of yesteryear, Savage Furs helm a ‘wave’ of their own, cutting a swath through the revivalist landscape with an infectious sound that is in equal turns sinister and endearing: the sound of pop futurism.
“I think the main crux of our creativity lies in opposition,” singer Del Jae says, “and a constant battle between what is pop and what is art, harkening back to a time when neither were mutually exclusive.” This perhaps explains why Savage Furs taste for aesthetics lie shrouded in intrigue and danger, taking its steer from literature and cinema, almost veering into David Lynch or Kenneth Anger territory. The image of shadowy eroticism melting with the music’s synthpop vanguard and industrial tones.
With the release of their debut 12” ep, London trio Savage Furs take the road less travelled. Although evocative of an era, their first recording sees them brandish a signature sound all of their own. Despite comprising elementally of influences vast and dear to them, from the electronic dance floor grasp of Depeche Mode or Sons And Fascination era Simple Minds to the more art rock tendencies of Bauhaus or Chrome, their music manages to effortlessly pull together a marriage of sound and vision with heartfelt originality.
Beneath the over-driven paranoia of ‘Thrones Of Young Ice’ lie vocal melodies and hooks that scintillate, whereas ‘Sick Lamborghini’ plays like a saxophone-tortured take on ‘The Reflex’, the chorus projecting upwards from the textured plates of noise. The animalism of ‘Mohair Metal’ is a cajoling force, the guitar is elegant, the rhythmic propulsion like a conveyor belt. ‘Asphalt Sorcery’ closes as a surreal ode to Grace Jones, it’s transcendence of pulses revolting against smooth vocals and celestial synths.
“A melting pot of influences spills over and spreads a crystalline gloop all its own….expect a classic debut album out of them, because this is brilliant.” -Mick Mercer
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