LA Priest - Rubber Sky
- NICK DUTFIELD
- Jul 9, 2020
- 3 min read
Priests don´t feature greatly in pop´s history. At one end of the canonical spectrum there´s Judas Priest, who our metal correspondent has written off as ´chronically bad´, whilst at the other is ´Hip Priest,´a song which owes its elevated standing to its appearance in almost everybody´s Top 30 Fall Songs chart.
Now we have LA Priest, which is really just Sam Dust (aka Eastgate), who is a new father and not a priest, and who lives in Wales not LA. It seems some people will say anything to exaggerate their clerically glam status. As Sam Dust works alone in LA Priest we can categorise him as a lone tinkler, a point that Dust has reached in stages, starting in a group, progressing to a duo, Soft Hair, with Connan Mokasin (21st century New Zealand music´s answer to Warhol), and finally settling down on his own. Perhaps making up for the lack of bandmates thereafter, he chose to devote considerable time to building an unpredictable drum machine called GENE. His account of the ensuing woes reminds me of a quote from New Order´s Steven Morris, describing some archaic recording process they devised, he said, ´it was impossible to do, by the way. I know that now, but at the time I just thought it was incredibly difficult.´ Proof that you can be hilarious and heroic.
In some ways, GENE resembles a real drummer; it doesn´t keep perfect time and it thinks that nobs and noise go hand in hand. LA Priest´s new album is named after GENE, which I´m pretty sure is a tribute never garnered by an actual human drummer. You can get more insight into GENE´s thing on an online emulator which is accessed through the Domino Records website.
Untethered idiosyncrasy is an advantage of working alone, and casting our first glance at the video to Rubber Sky we can see this at work. Dust is giving off louche rock goddisms in the bath, a moment where bandmates would surely have stepped in, saying ´there´s no room for us in there,´ or ´aren´t guitars in baths a hazard?´ GENE keeps his opinions to himself. The song sets off with a plaintive guitar figure, and soon gets added beef from a synth bassline – the resemblance to a studio loner´s software presets is undermined by a crafted quirkiness and it´s clear that production-wise, just like in his songwriting, Dust is devoted to finding the ear-teasing grit which will catch your attention and hold it there through repeated listens.
Video locations that fit the lyrics haven´t often been baths but look at this,
“Here where the water is flowing, Where I don't know but I'm going, On my own, On my own,”
so there is a lone aquatic connection but also maybe a reference to Dust´s newly arrived offspring, or at least its journey from womb bath to dry land. Plus the ´they´ in
“They don't know but believe in me,”
sound convincingly like parents. Just don´t ask me what Rubber Sky has got to with this, my theory´s best explanation involves a cradle´s soothing mobile, put together from idiosyncratically selected rubber. Come to think of it, another thing that band members might have said is, “You know that catchy bit where you repeat On My Own, On My Own about 20 times, maybe we could make THAT the title.” Drum machines are no such nuisances.
THIS WEEK
LA Priest – Rubber Sky
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LAST WEEK
Khruangbin – So We Won´t Forget
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EXTRAS
LA Priest – Beginning
Soft Hair -Lying Has To Stop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFkAjX0Gz8Y
The GENE emulator
https://earthwindow.org/gene-machine/#_
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