"Love One Self" is the lead single from Paranoid London’s new long-player, "Arseholes, Liars, and Electronic Pioneers". The album sees the pair throw a party for a whole load of musical friends, and special guests. On the single, it’s Joe Love, from recent Domino signings Fat Dog, who’s in the spotlight.
The South London band, self-proclaimed “King Of The Slugs”, won’t make their own recorded debut until late October, but have gained a devoted following via flamboyant, unpredictable live shows, chiefly at Brixton’s Windmill, where they fuse rock `n` roll and rave. The gigs, loud, and with lysergic light shows, have performers and audience alike reaching for collective ecstasy through a total derangement of the senses. It’s this, as much as his drunken, half-cut, drawl, that Joe brings to PL’s proceedings.
The song’s title, on paper, might suggest something religious, and I guess it is of sorts. However, rather than biting Biblical prose, Joe’s lyrics instead liken beating himself “red and raw” to a William Blake-ian vision. The southpaw boasting that his “Left arm looks like Popeye’s.”
The track begins with Love’s stuttered, serrated, vocals, chopped-out over an EBM / industrial B-line and kick. The tune’s ruff, rude jack, somewhere between Front 242’s Let Your Body Learn, and Adonis’ Chicago house classic, No Way Back. Synths scream and shriek, their knobs sharply twisted and tweaked, emitting strobed energy flashes. The acid taking hold as things come to a climax. Joe’s own wailing, growling, and wild, echoed exclamations adding to the mad, mounting intensity.
Chicago house producer 400+ undergirds their crisp, minimal arrangements with varying shades of dread, but also errant glimmers of optimism. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 9, 2022
