Staff Reviews

Grumbling Fur - Furfour

Review by Cai Trefor

One of the most thought-provoking and original sounding records of 2016»

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Somewhere, in the still-remaining quiet places of London, Grumbling Fur is at work. This being is the joint manifestation of Alexander Tucker and Daniel O'Sullivan which, since 2011, has birthed a series of increasingly focussed albums of psychedelic pop. Their new album, 'Furfour', is a record that's the sum of a dizzying array of creative projects by two key figures in an esoteric underground still thriving despite the pressures and pains of modern London. On 'Furfour', Grumbling Fur is joined by This Heat's Charles Bullen and Isobel Sollenberger from Bardo Pond on some tracks, all part of Grumbling Fur's quest "for kindred spirits, open souls and players we respect." This goes for each other, of course: "It's often a case of both trying to work around each others ideas to balance and include one another's voice," they explain of the song-writing process. Working in their own home studios, Grumbling Fur blew on the embers and 'Furfour' began to glow. It's a curious, generous-hearted and organic-sounding record that has its mood set by the easy harmonising of O'Sullivan and Tucker's voices as they oat melodiously above clackering rhythms of Milky Light, strings as celestial beings in Silent Plans, scraps of half-heard spiritual texts and, conversely, the synth pop banger of Acid Ali Khan which sounds, as one writer once summed up Grumbling Fur, "like Depeche Mode in a stone circle". Golden Simon and Heavy Days, meanwhile, describe the many horizons of the pop landscape that Brian Eno painted in Another Green World.
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