Something beautifully dark is happening to our notions of pop music, and haunting us with every note, beat and word uttured are Cold Crows Dead, a new collaborative project from Brighton's faviourite psychedelic pop artist and songwriter Paul Steel and Murray Macleod, frontman of Aberdeen's distorted poppers The Xcerts. The two former housemates bonded through a mutual love of dark comedy, and inspired by the melancholic psychedelia of Sparklehorse, began writing music together. A few months later, Mark Linkous, leader of Sparklehorse, commited suicide.
What began as one song, grew organically into a full 10 track album and a music video to the track 'Ghost That Burns Your House Down' that instills an avian terror not seen since Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. The album was recorded at Paul's home studio using an aural heritage of instruments, varying from theremin and mellotron, horns and strings, to vintage drum machines, analogue synthesizers and everything in between. They have made use of 'found sounds', and somewhat unconvential recording techniques including recordng themselves drowning in a bathroom sink, recruitng an OAP choir to perform at the end of the track 'GONE', distorting their vocals and reversing everything that didn't work.
