Tom Rodwell - Wood & Waste

Like the best short stories, Wood & Waste transforms skeletal structures into something fleshy and feverish, melding together outlandish influences with both improvisation and minimalist, dream-logic songwriting.

The album’s centrepiece is “She Got Me Boiling”, a juggernaut of psychedelic calypso grafted to mindless riffs on cannibalism that would make the Mighty Sparrow blush.  Driven by Rodwell’s trademark bass-heavy guitar and animated carnival drums from NZ free improv notorieties Chris O’Connor and Jeff Henderson, it’s a fiendishly irresistible piece of music, as is the absurdist one-chord bottleneck slide freak-out “Touch Me Like a Teddybear” - a lascivious black hole of meaninglessness and satire.

Elsewhere “Keep on Knockin’” subverts a grim Bo Diddley beat with dissonant Mellotron in praise of Edward Hopper and William Morris, while “Plenty Time” is a species of prog rhumba set in Roman Britain, indebted to Nigerian giant King Sunny Ade. 

Tracked on tape at Roundhead Studios, via The Who’s old Neve console, Wood & Waste is an entirely analog production with no digital conversion at any stage.  Mastering and lacquer cut directly from 1/2” mixdown tapes by the legendary Kevin Gray in LA.