Fatu Hiva was the fourth tape I recorded as War Drum, the first I can still listen to without wincing, and possibly the best thing I've ever recorded - which I state as someone who generally regards most of his own back catalogue as disappointing at best. War Drum's mission statement (what I thought I was playing at) can be extrapolated by referring to previous entries, but could probably be summarised as Death In June with Precolombian Mexican lore in preference to the European stuff and associated Nazi tendencies. I was trying to do something folky without necessarily sounding folky - Looking for Aztlán notwithstanding. Most of this stuff makes sense if you'd boned up on Mexican history and Quetzalcoatl as much as I had, so please feel free to visit the anthropology or mythology sections of your local book store in order to learn more. That said, Caught in the Glare was inspired by my having read up on the planet Mercury, and is - I suppose - a sound painting, if you will, of radiation blasting back out into space from the planet's night-side surface as it slowly turns. The track Fatu Hiva was inspired by Thor Heyerdahl's account of his living on a remote island of the same name.
Musical points of potential interest might be the covers of tracks by Severed Heads and Tuxedo Moon, also that Andy Martin of the Apostles, Academy 23, and UNIT plays electric guitar and provides backing vocals on Looking for Aztlán; and The Cage and Night Song were recorded with Glenn Wallis of Konstruktivists on vocals when he came to visit one evening. If you want to dig really deep, part of New God was recorded on a digital studio thing owned by James and Jason of Orange Can, who were NME darlings for a couple of months but somehow failed to become the next Stone Roses.
As for the rest, my listening was pretty much exclusively rap, R&B and the like by this point, the influence of which you'll be able to hear in some of these tracks - particularly For Christopher Rios which was my tribute to the recently deceased Big Pun.
So there you go, on the strength of being arguably the least-shit thing I've ever done, please download and enjoy this one. Amazingly it sold about a hundred copies, or at least I had to do a second run of fifty copies at the place I used to use in Bromley, and by the time I got around to packing up all my shit to move to America, they were all gone; so even if I didn't sell every last one, Fatu Hiva was at least much easier to give away for free than all my other stuff.
Musical points of potential interest might be the covers of tracks by Severed Heads and Tuxedo Moon, also that Andy Martin of the Apostles, Academy 23, and UNIT plays electric guitar and provides backing vocals on Looking for Aztlán; and The Cage and Night Song were recorded with Glenn Wallis of Konstruktivists on vocals when he came to visit one evening. If you want to dig really deep, part of New God was recorded on a digital studio thing owned by James and Jason of Orange Can, who were NME darlings for a couple of months but somehow failed to become the next Stone Roses.
As for the rest, my listening was pretty much exclusively rap, R&B and the like by this point, the influence of which you'll be able to hear in some of these tracks - particularly For Christopher Rios which was my tribute to the recently deceased Big Pun.
So there you go, on the strength of being arguably the least-shit thing I've ever done, please download and enjoy this one. Amazingly it sold about a hundred copies, or at least I had to do a second run of fifty copies at the place I used to use in Bromley, and by the time I got around to packing up all my shit to move to America, they were all gone; so even if I didn't sell every last one, Fatu Hiva was at least much easier to give away for free than all my other stuff.
Tracks:
1 - Caught In The Glare
2 - Chicoce Coatl
3 - Looking for Aztlán
4 - Fatu Hiva
5 - Kingdom Hall
6 - Southern Cross
7 - Maguey Hare
8 - Nation
9 - On Mission
10 - The Cage
11 - Jaguar Sun
12 - Caxtollice Toxcatl
13 - New God
14 - Night Song
15 - Celebración de la Noche Triste
16 - For Christopher Rios
17 - Tepetlaoztoc II
18 - Land Of Thorns
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