26 January 2024 - 0 Comments

Guitar-wielding instrumentalist A Crude Mechanical today releases a new single, simply titled When.

However, things aren't quite as simple as they might seem, as A Crude Mechanical (aka Shane Warbrooke) explains.

When is the sixth song on A Crude Mechanical's debut album Discourse, "and it marks the transition out of the digital chaos that informs the first five tracks.

It's a propulsive gallop forging a way through the dark forest of electronic stochastic terrorism we are all constantly drowning in, driving towards an open, bright future where beauty can be appreciated for it's own sake again.

Musically it's a math rock take on early trip hop, built from a base of bowed and heavily manipulated guitar."

Shane Warbrooke is the debut child of Glenda Warbrooke, and his solo project A Crude Mechanical's debut album Discourse was released in November last year.

Warbrooke has previously been in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau bands The Bemsha Swing, 1000, and Climate Change. (*The first Climate Change single has just been recovered from obscurity; you can listen to it here: Hold My Shares).

"An active proponent of the Tāmaki Makaurau musical underground for the past two decades, Shane Warbrooke has always pushed back against the order of the day.

Now he's delivering the ultimate mic drop by quite literally dropping the mic from his music. A Crude Mechanical is Warbrooke's one-man-band for the apocalypse era, a lone wolf instrumental orchestra-for-one inspired by watching the co-opting of revolutionary messaging by alt-right chumps, and realising - in his own words - "there's no point in having lyrics anymore". - Flying Out

Graham Reid at Elsewhere describes A Crude Mechanical's soundscape as "melodic music more than accumulated noise and much of it...is dialed right down... And Now The Artifice Is The Art is a glorious prog epic."

Roger Bowie, Muzic.net.nz: "the guitars are eloquent, they are the voice in a voiceless word. Overall, the mood is sombre and threatening, despite pleasing to the ear..."

Comments

Return to News Archive