album assessment
Erotic Secrets and techniques of Pompeii
Pitchfork Libra
Launched: 2 October 2025
(5/5)
Second album from the band that LTW have been calling Future Megastars, for a pair years now. Are they ‘Prog Rock’? Are they probably the most pretentious or probably the most brilliantly imaginative band round? Punk evangelic relic Ged Babey ought to detest them if he had ideas to stay to, however insists they’re ‘The Greatest Band on the Planet? Yeah, however which planet?’
There actually isn’t one other band round fairly like Erotic Secrets and techniques of Pompeii.
They’re Biblical! They’re Supernatural!
They’re a extra like a residing, respiratory Fantasy or Graphic Novel come to life than a rock and roll band.
Or a superb, ingenious, cinematic film or mini-series about an alternate universe. (Just like the disorientating All the things, In all places, All At As soon as.)
Or an imposing murals/structure that dominates the skyline of your creativeness.
They’re Thriller, Literature, Historical past, Fantasy, Creativeness, Theatre, (After)Life… condensed into the rock band format for serious-fun and art-kicks.
They are going to appeal to the Outsider, the Dreamer, the Mental, the Cosmologist, the Determined, the Misplaced… initially – till they write a breakthrough hit – their Bohemian Rhapsody – and the broader public embrace them.
They’re Physician Who, Terry Pratchett, Black Mirror, Mervyn Peake, pseudo-science, house archaeologists, time-travelling, gender-fluid, shape-shifters…….. (Ged, what you imply is they’re art-school peacocks who dress-up and put on kooky make-up, don’t you?) They’re aliens who’ve migrated from distant planets to stay amongst us and create mischief and a brand new pan-global omni-sexual faith…. (Cease It!)
Pitchfork Libra is a ritual disguised as a document. It’s arch, it’s alchemical and it’s the subsequent chapter of the band’s musical journey. It begins with the picture of the Pitchfork – a weapon raised in revolt, thrust into flesh. Then comes the astrological Libra – the scales, as soon as balanced, now shattered. The cosmos cracked open.
Pitchfork Libra explores the everlasting cycle of delivery, life, demise, and rebirth – a serpent devouring its personal tail. From the feverish hysteria of the Dancing Plague of 1518, to the esoteric trials of Robert Anton Wilson’s Chapel Perilous, to fragmented psychological states stitched along with sound, Pitchfork Libra is a descent and an invocation. Ever-present all through the myth-soaked album is the ghost of Jack Parsons – rocket messiah, intercourse magician, tragic prophet of the in-between. He was a person suspended between earth and moon, science and sorcery, modernity and delusion. His presence is a thread that weaves by way of the chaos, binding the sacred to the profane.
Pitchfork Libra doesn’t relaxation – it writhes. And it welcomes YOU with open jaws!
(Reviewer wriggles snake-like on his stomach in his candle-lit lair making an attempt to free himself from the makeshift straight-jacket.. so he can stick with it evangelizing…)
I simply love the imagery and vocabulary ESOP use:
The Pox, bones, beasts, witches, execution (Ten Ton Delirium)
Malicious, pernicious, capricious, vicious (Ossuary Kisses)
Supernature, glossolalia (Zygote)
Apotheosis, soliloquy, paladin (transferring sidewards)
Falconer, Ferryman, the grave, the moon, the pond, rainbow, sword (Convey Me Again…)
And the places the song-lyrics inhabit, in a single music alone, they’re: battered procuring centres, the ring highway, pylons, a darkish and starless airfield, a moist Glaswegian graveyard…
A way of haunted landmarks as they self-summarise in one other music
And so many witty, surreal, quoteworthy lyrics and mad rhyme-schemes;
They by no means paid me what I’m value so pay me some consideration
I’m trickster, mischief-maker / Watch me put a wasp within the incubator
Of all of the animals I like most / You possibly can’t go incorrect with a child goat
From semen to sepulchre / It’s all brimstone and sulphur / Commencing from the foetus / ‘Til Papa Time defeats us
There are not any weak tracks, not a second wasted. it’s a manic album that doesn’t take a breath but has such zig-zagging musicality, operatic tunefulness and technical talent mixed it leaves you dizzy.
The album opens with the ecstatic, erratic “Ten Ton Delirium”, setting the scene for an intrepid 35 minutes. From then on, the band’s chaotic model of wonk rock shimmies into new wave, glam, massive rock riffs (“Convey Me Again from the Black Past”), and extra atmospheric territories (“Zygote”, “We’ve All Been Merciless”). Their sound has advanced since their debut album, however there’s nonetheless that darkness, that insanity that’s undeniably ESOP.
The science fiction angle is acute whenever you get to the music that insists…
The Whitechapel fatberg, sure it held a heartbeat…
Thomas Hawtin – the lead vocalist and performer extraordinaire actually does inhabit the identical sort of cult cultural house, a throne, that has eternally been reserved for Tim Curry (as Frankenfurter and past) however he appears to have the brainpower of Will Self and the creativeness of Charlie Brooker too.
Tom Hackwell, guitar, Moog, backing vocals and manufacturing might be a genius too. Having been in comparison with McGeoch he appears to copy and adapt the mans sounds at will, simply to show he can, in addition to including a dozen new concepts, tones and chord shapeshifting. Or possibly its Sean Jones the opposite guitarist?
The gleaming manufacturing (and/or musical association) could be very like The Right Use of Cleaning soap in that it’s slick, funky, sharp, easy, rocks gently and intricately somewhat than with an excessive amount of bombast.
Each departed and new bass-players Julian and Louise are credited on the album, however the general sound stays the identical. Jake Cheesman (whose surname all the time makes me smile Gromit) is a superb drummer who provides the band their nimbleness and suppleness.
My earlier comparisons to obscure greats like Punishment of Luxurious and Virgin Prunes are redundant. On album quantity two ESOP have genuinely gone up a gear in each means conceivable – aside from business-led commerciality. They’ve honed their uniqueness into their very own ebullient and magical sound.
I might go on (and on and on…) about how magnifique Pitchfork Libra is… however now could be the time for YOU to hear and be captured, captivated and bewitched by its energy, majesty, wit, verve and utter magnificence.
(Goes for a lie-down)
PITCHFORK LIBRA TOUR 2025
17/10 – Bristol, UK – Tough Commerce (Album launch present)
24/10 – Tourcoing, FR – Le Grand Combine
25/10 – Troyes, FR – Pageant Off Off Off
28/10 – Reims, FR – La Cartonnerie
30/10 – Milano, IT – Arci Bellezza
31/10 – Sion, CH – Level 11
01/11 – Ravenna, IT – Bronson
02/11 – Zagreb, HR – Tvornica Kulture
04/11 – Kusel, DE – Kulturzentrum Kinett
03/12 – Edinburgh, UK – Sneaky Pete’s
04/12 – Manchester, UK – The Fort
05/12 – Birmingham, UK – Sunflower Lounge
06/12 – London, UK – The Ready Room
All phrases Ged Babey with Press Launch content material in italics.
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