If your night sky looks like this, contact an astronomer, or possibly an exorcist.
Trojan Horse is built around the core of the Duke brothers: broadly, guitarist Nick, bassist Loz, and keyboardist Eden, though in practice they all play a great many instruments. On World Turned Upside Down, they're joined by drummer Richard Crawford and produced by "collaborator" (their words) Danny The Red, which I choose to believe is his real name. They had one self-titled album and one EP under their belts by 2014.
At their core, Trojan Horse are psychedelic progressive rock. Thick guitar, deep compositions, big vocals, and a hell of a lot of flair. We often give opening tracks as tasters for a band's sound here on The Trunk, but this time we're going to show you the closing track from WTUD, as a perfect summary of what these guys are all about in less than two minutes.
Give yourself a moment, and maybe a second listen, to drink it in. Get a load of those vocals! Everyone pitches in their voice on this album, and the bouncy, reactive vibe all those voices lend is infectious. I often find myself trying to sing or hum along to all the parts at once, which usually goes about as well as you'd expect.
That same sense of bigness extends to the rest of the instrumentation too, from guitars you could probably drown in to powerful, razor-edged synth lines. But, somehow, it doesn't overwhelm you. Here we have another all-too-rare example of a band that loves deep, full compositions but doesn't see that depth and fullness as the final goal. These songs still sound like songs - bloody good songs, at that - rather than bulging collections of noise.
While reviewers sometimes had a hard time describing what this music was, exactly, most were in agreement that WTUD was a sterling collection of music, from The Progressive Aspect ("an album of fierce independent spirit and unstoppable energy") to PROG Magazine ("everything that’s great about both classic and modern prog") to Already Heard ("might just be the most interesting album you’ll hear all year").
If you like the sound of all that... well, World Turned Upside Down is still available from the webstore, and the dazzling follow-up Fukushima Surfer Boys is also worth checking out. Climb aboard this Trojan Horse and you're sure to leap out into a defenceless Troy of... um... good... music?
Wow, I'm good at this.
Status Update
Come rain or snow or thunder or, in this case, frankly unfair heat, the Elephant Towers stand as a bastion of stiff-lipped endurance. The release clocks wait for no heat wave or summer storm, and we keep them running. The clock for Arms Open Wide ticks ever closer to the 17th, the timeframe for preorders trickling away into the void like oiled sand. The clock for Dial has a little longer left, but the march towards September 14th is no less constant, and again only a preorder will thwart time's tyranny.
Review Roundup
Two more reviews rolled in for The Euphoric this week from Europe - one from relatively close to home, an 8.8 from Profil, and a fantastic six out of six stars from Uzbek site Progressor. If you fancy a "wild, eccentric yet also compelling production", look no further.
And here's something we never expected to say: it's not strictly a review, but one of our artists was featured earlier this week on Radio 3! Part 10 from Matt Baber's Suite for Piano and Electronics got a spot on Nick Luscombe's Late Junction, and, if that doesn't establish our genre-fluid cred, I don't know what does.
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