EMPIRES OF MIND

                      

                           Radical Dance Faction play The Empire Bar, London 23rd March 2019

 

 

RDF claim the stage in the bar of Hackney Empire, London

Colouring night, these musicians are alarming the air with attack,

Chris Bowsher’s vibrancy, long earnt, longer sought for

Across wrack and ruin, affords thoughts construction

To reconstitute what life lacks. His singular vision is smeared

Across the new album they herald; Daydream Dystopia blazing

While the young and trendy just preen.

Here are seasoned hands,

Older throats seeking danger’s affirmation

As each groove scars and troubles

Society’s self regard and false dream.

Feel Dread starts to fray, its stuttering ska chiming changes

Murph’s guitar like a jacknife, slicing the air and song beat,

As Bowsher exhorts, music’s exhaust pipe ploughs and furrows,

Upturning earth as it passes, these feelings of fear stoke hearts’ heat.

Dream a Lot poems it, as Steve Cruickshank power drums,

Bowsher’s howling, Hungerford tones primed by poison

And the curative found in verse.

Working Class Hero storms in, angrier even than Lennon

Whose stark condemnation is in this faction’s view even worse.

The appeal from the streets and clashing guitar

Makes words hammer, aping the drum track that dances and arcs on its own,

In these expert hands comes the hymn of dance

Fed by protest as a near ambient echo

Halters and haunts every step spent on the small floor

With a passion impelled afterglow.

Beast in the Door is grunge scorched as Murphs guitar digs the trenches

Dan Foster’s bass underpinning like a river and pulse through the wound.

Notes shimmer like gold as in the lyric’s lost treasure,

The reverberation of spirit darkened and dealt all too soon.

Here in Hackney, the new form of Radical Dance has been fashioned

From a loyal crowd whose ripped conscience can even be seen in their clothes

As Old Man’s Eyes crashes in Bowsher calls for both the Pope and Prince Phillip;

He’s calling them to task in a moment and he wants repaid all that’s owed.

Nimble guitar lines, deep bass, Drums like a warning.

Karen Rickett’s soul fedbacking vocals echoing passion calls.

Here is the Eastern twinge uniting East and South London

To find new directions to Babylon straight from Deptford

As attendant trees wither and accusation’s leaves pierce and fall.

RU1 reggaes through. Chris’s dreads like song tendrils, linking him

Back to Marley; maybe this time protest sparks,

As the song settles and soars and the refrain speaks of blindness

Murph’s near arabic guitar break entrances, snake charming us back

Into dark. War Dream powers us. Its call for change is an anthem.

 

Cruickshank’s drums, like throats rattled at the chance of change and the taste

Of victory sensed even as the groove settles. Foster’s sway gracing fingers

Saving every precious move from noise waste.

What the Man Made of Stone’s poison line corrupts the bar’s star spiked lager,

The dance reveals swagger as it lurches and fills the hot space,

Here is the punkish protest evolved in a Youth fed arrangement,

Bowsher’s word wound warnings spiralling out and across his charged face.

Riverwise, Borderlline, Surplus People, Rogue Trooper, each new song

From the album carves and reshapes wisdom’s thoughts

These comes from a life lived in direct opposition and the discovery

That 2000AD, once a future was just as hope starved as Orwell’s 1984.

 

Paris concludes the album and gig

Joining the radical dance to mind movement

In the empire location and the kingdoms we create

In our head. Here is a band and a view that made in age

Achieves wisdom; Present worry confirming

That those who can’t think are the dead.

We let the privileged bury us and thus allow our removal.

The Radical Dance is survival.

And the faction we have can’t be blessed.

But there is still one to seek and in London tonight here the soundtrack

To a new form and movement and a fresh way for time to repent.

 

 

 

 

 

                                                   David Erdos 24th March 2019  


This entry was posted on in homepage and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.