By: William Covert
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Listening to the Cardiff based duo of Right Hand Left Hand one of the first things that stands out is the amount of instrument layering that’s happening only by two guys. Each member in RHLH plays drums and guitar, and their songs take live looping to new places with their ability to seamlessly blend guitar and synth melodies in a patchwork with layers of counter harmonies and rhythm guitars locked in with constantly driving drums. Right Hand Left Hand’s new eponymous album is a testament to how full sounding two-piece bands can actually be while crafting interesting and catchy songs.
The album opens with a pulsating guitar riff in “Seat 18c” and after a few guitar loops are laid down and the drums come in the song is in full force and does a great job of setting the tone for the rest of the album. Stylistically RHLH does a great job of playing with different song textures and song pacing, and can go from having very upbeat rhythms similar to that of Battles or Maserti while also weaving in more conventional post-rock dynamic build-ups that in some places encroach on post-metal and don’t sound far off from ‘Geneva’ era Russian Circles.
RHLH defy a lot of post-rock convention on this album, and while most of the album is instrumental, there are a couple tracks that have vocals, most notably “Nightmares in the Afternoon” which features some haunting futuristic sounding guitar melodies that doesn’t sound too far off from something found on the most recent David Bowie albums. “A.N.Y.” and “The Milgram Experiment” are other stand out tracks on the album, and the band excels the most on this album with tracks build on steady and driving loop patterns that work to propel songs along and “Tarts and Darts” might be the best example of this song formula on the album (“Tarts and Darts” can also be found on the math-rock/post-rock focused compilation album Math & Atlases: UK). At other points in the album like on the track “Jack Churchill” the duo incorporate elements of synths and electronic music that kind of resembles a former Cardiff post-rock band in Gallops.
Overall RHLH have created an album that’s not only very catchy, but sounds very different to most other contemporary UK two-piece bands.
We liked the album so much here at E&D Towers we asked the band to pen a few words on the stories behind the songs.
1. Seat 18c
This song is named after a seat number that is rumoured to be the one that D B Cooper sat in on his flight. D B Cooper is the alias used by a still unidentified man who successfully hijacked a Boeing 727 back in 1971 and to this day has never been caught.
The story goes that he boarded the flight between Oregon and Seattle, lit a cigarette and ordered a whiskey. Cooper passed a note to the flight attendant and asked her to read it and explained that he had a bomb in his briefcase. The note explained that he wanted $200,000, 4 parachutes and for the plane to be refueled on arrival in Seattle. She conveyed this to the captain who complied and also informed the authorities. The plane lands in Seattle and Cooper deliberately asks for it to be at the furthest end of the airport away from buildings. This was to avoid any sniper shots. His chosen seat was also away from the windows for the same reason.
The plane is refueled and the money and parachutes are provided. Cooper releases all the hostages apart from 1 cabin crew member and the pilot and co-pilot and they take off. Cooper instructs the pilot to fly at a certain altitude and certain speed and sends the member of the cabin crew back to the cockpit. Minutes later a warning light sounds that the rear doors had been opened. Cooper had jumped with one parachute and another attached to the bag of money and he has never been found.
9 years later, a fisherman many miles down stream from where Cooper jumped caught a bundle of dollar bills in his line which matched some of the bills that Cooper was given. Many people have claimed to be him but most theories suggest he may not have survived the jump. However, no body was ever found and no more money has ever turned up. The FBI still have a file open on it.
One thing is for sure, he had an in depth knowledge of aviation and using parachutes he also cleverly asked for a physically manageable amount of money that could be carried and that could be obtained by the authorities easily enough. One rumour is that he was formerly in Vietnam and therefore had all the skills necessary to pull it off. To this day, it is the only successful plane hijack in aviation history.
2. Fermat’s Last Theorem
This is a mathematical equation which was first conjectured by Pierre De Fermat in 1637. Fermat provided evidence of his assumptions in the margins of an arithmetic book but there wasn’t enough space in the margin to show all his workings. It took a further 358 years of mathematicians trying to work out what the missing details were to prove the theorem. In 1994 this was finally done by a British mathematician who finally proved the theorem. Naming the song after this is more of a in joke on our part that we tend to get called Math Rock which in itself is an odd title for a genre especially as most of our songs are very straight forward in terms of timing.
3. Jack Churchill
Was the shortened name for a now legendary British soldier that fought in t he 2nd World War. He was famous for only being armed with a long bow, broadsword and a set of bagpipes. He was the last person to kill an enemy with an arrow in combat. He believed that if you didn’t have a sword when going into battle you were not properly dressed. There is famous photo beach landings where someone believed to be him is running out of the water towards the enemy under heavy fire with the just sword in his hand.
4. Nightmares In The Afternoon
This is taken from a line in an episode from a little known 1976 series called Beasts by Nigel Kneale. Really is worth watching the series.
5. A.N.Y.
This song is one of 2 on the album where we both play drums at the same time following a lot of interchanging of looped guitar parts. It was written on one of the anniversaries of the death of MCA from the Beastie Boys and as massive fans it seemed fitting to use his initials to title the song.
6. Tarts and Darts
There is a more light hearted story behind this title. It was actually a heckle that a female friend of ours who shall remain anonymous shouted out at a gig. She was referring to a famous shop in Cardiff city centre which simply sells adult magazines and darts paraphernalia. It was such a bizarre heckle that it was worthy of a song title.
7. Broken Hill
Named after the Battle of Broken Hill in Australia. Probably best if people read this for themselves.
8. The Milgram Experiment
Put simply, it’s a psychological test to see how far people will go and how obedient they will be despite the fact they are being told they are hurting someone with electrical shocks. The reality is there are no shocks happening at all and the person on the other end is simply acting. They must administer an electric shock every time the subject gets an answer to a question wrong. Each wrong answer results in a 15 volt increase. The results vary. Some people stop when they think the person is in pain but a lot of people continue to almost lethal levels just by simply being told that they won’t be to blame if anything happens and that they must continue.
9. The War of Jenkin’s Ear
Refers to a war between Britain and Spain in the 18th Century and the ear of a merchant sailor and smuggler was cut off and presented before the British Parliament. The war itself is well worth reading about.
10. Cliff Young Shuffle
He was an unlikely winner of an ultra marathon in the 1980’s between Melbourne and Sydney. He was 61 years old at the time and the shuffle refers to his style of running. He ran the 544 mile marathon and won by running without stopping whilst the rest of the field slept. Formerly a sheep farmer, he was used to rounding up sheep over huge distances on foot and had apparently done that for 48 hours non stop.
Although he was much slower than everyone else, the fact that he ran without sleep got him ahead and he finished 10 hours in front of the next competitor and smashed the record for the previous attempt by over 2 days. This was just one of numerous crazy ultra running attempts he made. The year before, he attempted to break the record for 1000 miles but had to abandon the attempt half way through as his team were not well prepared for it. He also attempted the round Australia running record where he completed 6500km of a 16000km run before stopping due to the ill health of one of his team mates. He was 76 at the time. What a legend!
11. Spring-heeled Jack
He’s part of English folklore in the 19th Century. People claimed to have had sightings of Jack and that he looked like a devil and could breathe fire. He was spring-heeled because he could apparently leap over incredible distances and heights.
