Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
£5GBP or more
WF 13 - Limited Edition Cassette
Cassette + Digital Album
Pro-dubbed white cassette with unique packaging including die cut outer sleeve and j-card. Also includes a collectable cigarette card with background details of the album's concept by Bill Foreman.
Includes unlimited streaming of WF 13 - The Polish Embassy / The Cane Field
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
My hand held the railing
I fingered the film.
I paused by the blue flowers
In the icy vestibule
I attended the scent of the sewer
Snow fell in the streetlight
A goshawk looked me straight in the eye
Then flew over the Spree
***
I knelt by the Embassy fence
He seemed asleep on the sidewalk
But ice formed on his moustache
And his eyes remained open
I lifted the flask from his fingers
I finished it for him
A streetcar’s sound crept closer
And I darted away
***
I slip on the steps
To the S-Bahn descending at Friedrich Street
I keep with the crowd
While I’m wiping away the bleeding
I give you the film
Our handshake enveloping secretly
Before you can leave
I attempt to speak discreetly
“If it's true that they're keeping me
Another year behind the Wall
I'm going to need that pistol you promised
So give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me.”
I drop my machete
I kneel in the mud
I listen to the wind
Shake the cane and move on
I tongue my broken tooth
I rub my malformed hand
A swift sails from the mountain
Toward the docks and across the bay
It flees these Antilles
Across the water to Venezuela
Along the coastline to Bahia
Across the water to the Cape Verdes
Up the river along the Casamance
***
The dim of the new moon
The scent of the whale oil
The pair of lanterns in my good hand
The shattering glass
The smoke in the rollers
The flying flames on the sails
A spotted piglet behind me
The burning curing house
The falling walls of the distillery
Our fleet footsteps
The crying livestock
The fading field in the distance
***
I set the snare
I lay down the manioc
A squeal in the shade of the kapoks
Black spots on the hog
I stroke my white beard
I’ll sleep hungry tonight
This project is my first album completed as Bizarre Statue. Between 1992-2016, I recorded and released music in a singer-songwriter vein both collaboratively and solo. As time passed, I came to feel somewhat boxed-in by this form.
Following a long retreat in 2018, I felt like I could let go of the rigidity of the traditional song form and use a more open-ended working process. This project is the result of that opening.
Both sides contain several instrumental and three vocal portions. Lyrically, each piece takes a setting and a focal character, “The Polish Embassy” that of a Cold War spy in East Berlin, “The Cane Field” that of an escaped slave in the 18th century St. Kitts.
March 2020
"Having delivered choice cassette/download albums from The Home Current and The Central Office of Information earlier this year, Woodford Halse takes another left field turn with the same format combination on this inaugural full-length from Bizarre Statue. The Polish Embassy / The Cane Field (dual-titled after its two eighteen-minutes-or-so long tracks), is a circuitous endeavour for someone who has previously followed more straightforward singer-songwriter paths. Building extended multi-movement instrumental passages around two fragmentary core songs, this is a collection that demands considerable but rewarding perseverance to pass through its many hidden dimensions.
Thus, “The Polish Embassy” side moves through musique concrète collages of minimalist percussion, serene neo-classical ambience, hushed ‘n’ scuffed vocal-led folk rambling and filmic Bernard Herrmann atmospherics. On the flipside, “The Cane Field” takes a more direct route initially as a whispery rustic rumination, before splaying-out to incorporate unhinged carnivalesque ricketiness, skeletal organic drones, Morricone-tinged cowboy-film meditations and spectral Ummagumma-era Pink Floyd psychedelia. Not a conventional or easy ride all told but there is something about Bizarre Statue that merits further observation." - Concrete Islands
credits
released March 1, 2020
Recorded between November, 2019 and December, 2019 in Spokane, Washington. All composition and sound by Bizarre Statue, save an adapted portion of Erik Satie’s Gnossienne no. 1 (public domain) in “The Cane Field,” and three field recordings, using a Creative Commons license:
Cigarette Card Image - Illustration adapted from “Lullabies of Many Lands Collected and Rendered into English Verse by A. Strettell” - 1894 (artist unknown)
Gnarly punk rock from the Philadelphia duo is unhinged in the best way, an in-the-red sonic assault a la Motorhead/Stooges. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 9, 2024
The sole recording from this Brooklyn group, “Service” is hushed and mysterious, its artful songs defying easy categorization. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 28, 2023
The Australian instrumental band juxtapose classical pianos and ambient swells with uncompromising, proggy post-metal. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 9, 2023