It feels rather pertinent to return to our regular scheduled programming with something so definitively exciting. Duds, one of Manchester’s most invigorating and categorically compelling propositions, are releasing their first full-length proper with Castle Face. Having honed their typically undeterminable formula through serial performances and a seemingly open attitude to structure and creativity, the group have crafted a debut that balances their idiosyncratic leanings in experimentalism with sharp, incisive arrangements.
Opening machination ‘Elastic Feel’ typifies the group’s evidently considered balancing act, bleeding their fascination with the uncustomary and how they can mould it into works of countering vitality. Harnessed precariously on the edge of wanting percussion and at points the piercing shriek of an at times unidentifiable instrument, Duds impressively chuck everything up their sleeves into a two and half minute time frame and make it so intensely perceptive. Guitars veer head first into each other along a melodic line fit for shifting to for hours upon end, never actually repeating for any longer than your mind can focus before a delirious cornet has deliciously ripped apart any consequence of foundation. Yet an uncompromising middle phrase remains, tiptoeing around and mining for any source of reticence, and here’s where the group’s impartiality weighs heaviest and brightest, in the small ventricles of abrasive noise where they compose their most melodically persuasive impulses.
With the stimulating augmentation in recording and belief in their speciality, Duds are further becoming some of the more engaging creatives from this side of the pond. Their first full-length – ‘Of A Nature Or Degree’ – is available from 22 September via Castle Face.
Duds’ are playing at End of The Road Festival and Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia this summer. Listen to first single ‘Elastic Feel‘ below.