Sunday, September 14, 2025

It Starts With a Birthstone 200 Albums For 2025 # 108 Rats On Rafts - Deep Below

 

In the early Eighties I fell big time for The New Psychedelia. Teardrop Explodes, Echo & The Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs. Felt. XTC, The French Magazine Les Inkoruptibles wrote an article which I struggled with with my PGCE French, couldn't make head or tail of and settled for their playlists.Went out and bought some records

Forty years on in less innocent times, Endtimes. For New Psychedia read New Dystopia. The Waeve. Rats on Rafts. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. I'll get back to you. In the meantime check out Elon Musk's Android Army. That should go down well with your muesli.

Why not listen to Rats on Rafts second album Deep Below and tuck into toast and orange juice. Rats on Rafts are an intense and earnest young quintent from Rotterdam who I'm much taken with. A Go Betweens for dark times. Cool hair dos and cheekbones. Fuelled I suspect by Orwell, Camus and Koestler paperbacks and ssecond hand copies of Diamond Dogs, Their vision is inspiring and contagious.

The dreaded Post Punk standby apellation seems appropriate. Deep Below is by turns Oriental. Angular. Cosistentlt gloomy and dramatic. Fabulous. 'The ice age is coming, the sun's zoomin' in...' I see  Rats on Rafts are playing tound the corner from me in a few days. I'm tempted to pop along. In the meantime  this will more than do. 

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