Grumbling Fur - Furfour (2016)

Somewhere, in the still-remaining quiet places of London, Grumbling Fur is at work. This being is the joint manifestation of Alexander Tucker and Daniel O Sullivan which, since 2011, has birthed a series of increasingly focused albums of psychedelic pop. Their new album, Furfour, is a record that s the sum of a dizzying array of creative projects by two key figures in an esoteric underground still thriving despite the pressures and pains of modern London. Furfour gradually emerged over three years of writing and recording at 147 Tower Gardens, the strange ivy-shrouded house that Tucker and OSullivan once called home. Its an album whose warm heart is shaped, say Grumbling Fur, by birth, loss, friendship, death, those things that happen to us all. Yet as ever with this duo, its altered through fantasy and sci-fi, Carlos Castenada, shamanic mind warp, house ghosts and meditation. Its in many ways remarkable that two such distinct personalities with their roots and much of their activity in the cultural left field can combine in a record that sounds so rooted, focused, and accessible. 2016 is a already a year of intense activity for Tucker and O Sullivan outside of Grumbling Fur : Tucker s latest comic was featured in Art Review, a full publication, World In The Force, will follow on Breakdown Press, along with a new solo album. O Sullivan has been at the core of the wildly successful This Heat reconstitution, and with Massimo Pupillo of Zu recently released Laniakea. As part of Ulver, he released ATGCLVLSSCAP, a pan-zodiacal excursion in sound, and later this year therell be a new album from Æthenor (a collaboration between OSullivan, Steve Noble and Stephen OMalley). In the guise of the Grumbling Fur Time Machine Orchestra, Tucker and OSullivan have just released a 12 inch of ROSE, their collaborative piece with Turner Prize-nominee Mark Titchner, who in turn produced the artwork for Furfour. Thereve also been a series of live collaborations with Charlemagne Palestine. This breadth of operation frees OSullivan and Tucker to create simple, hypnotically engaging songs from paradoxically freeform beginnings. Shaping the lot are their long-standing shared musical affections, a polyglot music encompassing orchestrated poptones, collage, dub and beat-making as well as experimental and drone elements: touchtones might include Faust, Arthur Russell, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Moondog, Michael Nyman, Gate, Syd Barrett, Stereolab, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Ashtray Navigations, Cc Hennix and Madlib. The 12 songs and interstitial abstract pieces that make up Furfourwere created not out of structure or theme, and rarely began at the beginning. Instead, Grumbling Fur work by generating sounds and ideas first and then moulding structures and ideas around this. Songs are about including the process in the finished piece and spontaneous ideas are laid down and a structure starts to emerge from this source, they explain: first thought best thought is our motto. On Furfour, Grumbling Fur is joined by This Heats Charles Bullen and Isobel Sollenberger from Bardo Pond on some tracks, all part of Grumbling Furs quest for kindred spirits, open souls and players we respect.