Introducing: The Cinematics

28 September 2009

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The Cinematics spent the latter part of last year holed-up in a disused army barrack in the west end of Glasgow, hiding from the world outside as it danced provocatively with disaster and ruin, and writing the songs which would ultimately become their new album, Love and Terror.
 
The band spent late-afternoons reading Rimbaud, Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Wolfe, imbibing weapons-grade coffee or cheap red wine, eating bizarre combinations of Chinese food and fighting over the records that they would listen to. The rhythm-section of Adam Goemans and Ross Bonney would play Sly and the Family Stone or Motown records, while guitarist, Larry Reid, would insist on the Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine.

All the while singer, Scott Rinning, would gaze in horror at day-old newspaper stories detailing the sad plight of bumblebee populations and the ever-receding polar ice-shelf, whilst by night, the four would conduct absinthe-fuelled recording-sessions, writing new songs with an old eight-track tape-recorder that they brought from America the previous summer.
 
After three months of writing and recording they were forced to dismantle their studio and vacate the building when police eventually investigated the unearthly noises heard at ungodly hours in the area. By this time, however, the band had already garnered a mass of songs and many of the actual recordings made during those months would eventually form the sonic nucleus of the new Cinematics album.

In order to capture the raw energy of the songs, it was quickly decided that they would record this new album themselves, disregarding modern studio trickery to produce a more honest and transparent sound than  what was found on the band’s first album. Now disco-funk rhythms were to meld with explosive vocals,  whilst buzz-saw guitars blended with weeping feedback and dark, analogue synth-lines would form the blueprints for the new album.
 
The band unfortunately  had a tough time following the international success of their 2007 debut album, A Strange Education, after their US-based label TVT got into an unrelated legal battle and later became bankrupt. The Orchard then stepped in to help get Love and Terror out to the people.

However, on the eve of delivering the album recordings, Ross and Adam’s home was fire-bombed in the early hours of the morning due to a failed insurance swindle involving the bar downstairs. Both band-members remained relatively unscathed, although drummer Ross was forced to brave the inferno to rescue the album masters.  
 
Written during a difficult and uncertain time for the band, the songs on Love and Terror reflect the dark conditions from which they were born and The Cinematics have now produced an honest and moving record of our times, distinguishing themselves as an ambitious band with something to say.

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