TOM RODWELL - WOOD & WASTE

Tom Rodwell

Wood & Waste


TRACKLISTING
A1 - Don’t Be a Fugitive All Your Life
A2 - Keep On Knockin’
A3 - Plenty Time
A4 - Carry On
B1 - Touch Me Like a Teddybear (SINGLE #1 - out Sept 24)
B2 - She Got Me Boiling (SINGLE #3 - out Dec 3)
B3 - Small Town
B4 - Make Believe (SINGLE #2 OUT OCT 22)
B5 - Dead End Road

Nine ragged songs that interweave supple dance rhythms with a writerly taste for the surreal, Wood & Waste is a charmingly
decadent record from singer-guitarist Tom Rodwell, (best known as frontman for Auckland arthouse blues institution
Storehouse and itinerant session man for the likes of Don McGlashan). Like the best short stories, Wood & Waste
transforms skeletal structures into something fleshy and feverish, melding together outlandish influences with both
improvisation and minimalist, dream-logic songwriting.
The album’s centrepiece is “She Got Me Boiling”, a juggernaut of psychedelic calypso grafted to mindless riffs on cannibalism
that would make the Mighty Sparrow blush. Driven by Rodwell’s trademark bass-heavy guitar and animated carnival drums
from NZ free improv notorieties Chris O’Connor and Jeff Henderson, it’s a fiendishly irresistible piece of music, as is the
absurdist one-chord bottleneck slide freak-out “Touch Me Like a Teddybear” - a lascivious black hole of meaninglessness and
satire. Elsewhere “Keep on Knockin’” subverts a grim Bo Diddley beat with dissonant Mellotron in praise of Edward
Hopper and William Morris, while “Plenty Time” is a species of prog rhumba set in Roman Britain, indebted to Nigerian
giant King Sunny Ade.
Tracked on tape at Roundhead Studios, via The Who’s old Neve console, Wood & Waste is an entirely analog production
with no digital conversion at any stage. Mastering and lacquer cut directly from 1/2” mixdown tapes by the legendary Kevin
Gray in LA. This first run of 180gram LP’s is by audiophile press Pallas in Germany.

Artist site:
www.tomrodwell.com