Savages & Bo Ningen – ‘Words To The Blind’

Anglo-French post-punk clashes with Japanese acid-rock in Dada-inspired musical maelstrom

This 37-minute collaborative recording was committed to tape live in concert in May last year, but the roots of ‘Words To The Blind’ go back far beyond the 2012 origins of the alliance between London-based punk artists Savages and Bo Ningen. This blazing composition takes inspiration from Dadaist ‘simultaneous poetry’ performances at Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire club in 1916, where the conflicting voices of multi-lingual participants reflected the Great War raging across Europe. Adopting the same technique, Savages singer Jehnny Beth speaks softly in French, while Bo Ningen’s Taigen Kawabe mutters in Japanese. Gradually, inevitably, all hell breaks loose, guitars and drums raging and subsiding as Beth sings words of conflict (“The beautiful song of the night / Is a song of war”). The maelstrom here falls within Bo Ningen’s freak-psych territory, but for Savages it represents another stride beyond 2013’s ‘Silence Yourself’ debut and into an unpredictable future. They might be reaching into the past for inspiration, but Savages are pushing restlessly forward.

Stuart Huggett

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