New Music: ‘Hoskins The He-Pee’ Hoskins Phenomenon
Take a deep dive into the weirdly wonderful and beautifully chaotic sonic world of Welsh indie collective Hoskins Phenomenon on their new interstellar EP, ‘Hoskins The He-Pee’.
Audio wizardry and strange tales align to whisk listeners across the stars on another mission to thwart the greatest threat ever posed to intelligent lifeforms – a nefarious character called Hoskins.
Hoskins Phenomenon is a multiversal intelligence organisation set up to protect us all against Hoskins, a shapeshifting anomaly who moves from host to host, forming allegiances with every imaginable baddie to take over worlds across multiple alternate universes.
Hoskins Phenomenon are there to protect us by hunting Hoskins down and countering his threats by targeting his single weakness – his susceptibility to banging music. ‘Hoskins The He-Pee’ is the next attempt to keep this beast at bay following the release of full-length record ‘Hoskins The Halbum’ in 2022.
The eight-track EP is a genre-warping rocket ride fuelled by elements of alternative, indie, psychedelia, punk, folk, rock and metal. It exudes a theatrical nature, accompanied by lyrical whimsy reminiscent of Syd Barrett and playful melodies that give way to darkly ominous overtures.
It is a rich collection of real life and invented unique characters, situations and subtle social observations, looping from the bizarre, to the sublime, to the quirky, to the solemn and back around again. Intensely experimental, ‘Hoskins The He-Pee’ fearlessly explores diverse sonic terrains with no care for comfort or convention, only connection across the void.
The odyssey embarks on the ponderous strains of opening track ‘Something Wrong’, jarring the senses awake with a stomping, swampy blues beat and searing guitar. The lyrics, minimal as they are, set an introspective tone for the EP.
Lead single ‘Three Little Men’, which was constructed around an original poem by local Port Talbot poetical legend, Nigel Frit Jones, unravels a haunting fable of power, injustice, and the ghosts of freedom. The song descends into a hallucinatory fever dream, building in intensity before suddenly ending, leaving us waking in a cold sweat.
Skies ahead lighten as we encounter ‘The Splashman’, featuring popular UK radio DJ Ken Bruce. The song’s lo-fi groove and vocals imbues it with the fascinating quality of a radio transmission from a far off galaxy, or perhaps an adjacent timeline. It’s a curious but welcome diversion, a moment of levity to offset the bittersweet.
Had Simon & Garfunkel collaborated with Pink Floyd in the late’60s, they may have produced something similar to ‘Soft Horn’. Gentle vocal harmonies mingle effortlessly with a lone guitar, picking its way through the unknown cosmos, much like our brave travellers thus far.
Sprechen sie Deutsch? Brush up on your conversational German for the noisy garage rock lashings of ‘Ich Liebe Dich’ (I Love You). Pounding drums, relentless overdriven guitar and plenty of feedback, it’s an undeniable banger sure to shake Hoskins to its heathen core.
‘Cowboy Hats And Kilts’ is a haunting spoken word sermon underpinned by brooding organ, creating a classic ’50s sci-fi movie atmosphere. The endless, imperceivable sprawl of the Universe hides many horrors, Hoskins among them. Venture deep enough into the abyss and they just may reveal themselves.
Deep breaths and acapella harmonies pre-empt ‘Missing Link’, the EP’s longest and perhaps darkest entry, clocking in at just over four and a half minutes. Like falling though a black hole, time stretches out before you, severed from the planes of reality – set the controls for the heart of nowhere.
The journey closes in the despondent refrains of ‘Splashman Revisited’, the final message from Hoskins Phenomenon on their latest quest. Has Hoskins been destroyed at last, or has he just been silenced momentarily by this salvo? Have the heroes prevailed, or become the very evil they were hunting begin with?
With a runtime of just 18 minutes, the EP is a short but potent trip; an intergalactic fairy tale tossed in a melange of melancholy and spiced with joyous, out-of-this-world highs. The first listen through will leave a curious aftertaste, tempting further sampling for the adventurous audiophile.
Visit Shiny Vinyl Presents for more about Hoskins Phenomenon.
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