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Album Reviews
Random Hand
Previous Nextauthor MAK date 29/09/23
MAK caught up with UK skacore favourites Random Hand on the day they released their self-titled album, which happens to be their fifth studio release. This also coincided with Handfest London, so we touch on the upcoming event and the success of previous Handfests. We dabbled into what makes a Random Hand song and how that has changed in recent years. The responses to new material so far along with diving deeper into a couple of the new songs and how they came about.
Sean: Menstrual cramps, I’d have loved to see them
Joe: I’ve not really seen them yet but you’ve seen them at Wonkfest and thought they were incredible
Sean: Yeah they were great
Joe: I asked a few bands like Snuff and Dubwar and a few other bands that would have been nice to get in the mix. It's a little bit more difficult I think, pretty much all the bands we booked we’re a lot closer to, then asking some of the bands we look up to and really like, but not quite mates with, it’s not so easy to get them on the bill for a celebratory type event. It's probably worked more in our favour to get in bands we’re a lot closer with. It would have been amazing to get someone like Capdown in the mix, but I know they’re just not doing shows like that, and who knows if we’ll get to see them again. We’re going to do another one next year, but there will only be one next year I think, and that will be in the summer.
There was a part where Robin does a segment by himself, then he cuts without doing the usual tail, but the audience did the tail bit that was in the chorus normally
Sean: A little bit like when he does the horn in “Play Some Ska”, and then just cuts and the audience just carries on doing it anyway singing the horn line.
Joe: It’s just been really good to see people talking about the new songs, getting behind them and enjoying them. The thing that I love is that there’s not a universal favourite. I think a lot of people really enjoy the fact that The Cycle is like a standard Random Hand track, it’s not repetitive, but exactly what you expect.
Sean: Some people were a little bit freaked out by Lifejackets weren’t they
Joe: That’s what we wanted to do though. We released "Lifejackets" first because we felt like it ticked all the boxes that people might expect from Random Hand but in no way delivered it in a way we have done before. I thought it was a safe way to project that we’re doing something new with this album, we are progressing, but you should like it. But there were a few people that were like “I hope the whole album isn’t like this”. Then when The Cycle came out they were all like “Oh thank god”.
We then released "Dead "Weight" and a lot of people were impressed with that. I put a post up a couple of days ago asking what everyone’s favourite is and there was no definitive answer, but in general, the response has been really positive. And for people who have heard the album over the last year, they’ve largely been saying it’s the best work we’ve done. To be 20 years in, that’s a nice place to be.
Joe: Anytime anyone has any doubts about when they are writing a song, I’ve always been like the moment Robin sings on it, nobody is going to think we’re ripping anyone off
Sean: You’ve had to tell me that numerous times
Joe: Every time we write a song, I’m like “It won’t sound like these guys when Robin sings on it”. It’s a bit like Marky Smith who said “I could just sing over bongos and it could be a The Fall song”
Sean: He probably did too.
Sean: I do remember looking at the tracklist once it was finished I was like “I think I’ve weighed in quite a lot on this, wait a minute, I haven’t really”, I realised quite late on that I thought I’d contributed more. I think I contributed two riffs to this whole album
Joe: Because of how we write, I don’t think we can just input based on who plants the seed of a song. Lifejackets for one was my seed, but it now sounds nothing like what I wrote. That was a dub song with a heavy riff. All that stayed was the chord progression and the lyrics.
Sean: It was hell trying to get our heads around that
Joe: You saved that with that keyboard line, I was not happy until that keyboard line came in. That’s the thing that made that song for me. Then I ride in the glory of the bassline in XY, and you wrote that. I haven’t played anyone else's bassline on any other random hand song ever. I’ve always preferred my own. Then Sean goes and writes this bloody line on MIDI, and I was like “Ahh, you shit”
Sean: I’m like oh you can’t play that yet? (jokingly)
Joe: It’s a little bit difficult that, Sean
The compromise was more volatile in the original lineup, we didn’t all get on, and it was hard work, but the end result was great. There is still the compromise, but it’s a lot more conversational and respectful in a way we can still get a similar dynamic out of it. And it's not done cynically or forcefully like we have to write it like Random Hand
Sean: It’s just how it came out. If anything we were trying to veer off a little bit.
Joe: When Sean first joined, we were like, “Do you like Limp Bizkit?” He went “You’re fucking joking”
Sean: I actually started laughing
Joe: the conversation was like “You are joking aren’t you?”, “Nah, you have listened to us haven’t you?” “Nah you can’t be serious”. He begrudgingly likes them
Sean: yeah I love them now, it’s like Stockholm syndrome.
Joe: It’s always been there, we’ve always been into heavy music. It’s kind of strange in a way, that ska has always been the thing that holds all the genres we are into together. I don’t really know how that happened. I went into it wanting to be in a band with the guys that I started the band with because we were all mates, and I had no interest in being in a ska band, but Matt and Robin did and that’s just how it stayed really. We didn’t want to upset anyone who was into it because of the ska, but we were always going to experiment with at least half of the album with a bunch of songs that didn’t feature ska.
Robin has always said we should get guests on, every album it’s been mentioned. We talked about approaching people when we wrote Inhale/Exhale. At one point we wanted to ask Kelly from No Comply, but we didn’t really know her well enough. It was always one of those things where you talk about it but it never happened. But when we sat down to talk about what we wanted with this album, and because we were spending a year making it we had time to do it.
So I asked Becca and she was well into the idea. I had this seed for an idea for a song. That line of “Here lies the music, it’s that thing that makes us or breaks us”. I basically took that intro and chorus to Robin, here’s the idea I’ve got. It was another one of those things where I wrote a lot of riffs, and then we completely destroyed them in the room and turned it into what it is now, which is a much better song than I initially wrote. The theme of the song was something that I knew Becca would relate to
Sean: The verse that she wrote was really cool
Joe: She came up with it really quick as well, she was amazing in the studio. Anyone who has been in a band for more than a decade will appreciate what that song is all about. It was written with her in mind, for her to be on board with us and she was great.
Sean: They definitely look out for each other.
Joe: If they ever have any issues, they just go this is toxic and they move on from it and change things up. If it’s not working, then cool it’s been great, but we’ll get someone else new in. I think to be able to do that, it’s great for the overall project. Where for us we had to have a good old break. And we’ve come back now, it’s better, but I don’t think we’ll ever be a band that decides to do a three-month tour somewhere to take a big chance in America again, it’s just not going to happen, but it’s really nice to live vicariously through our friends.
Riskee and the Ridicule are another bands who are righteously good and they just put out a great album, popes of Chillitown is another band that has really clicked for me. Popes are a band that just started to bubble up as we were going on hiatus so we never made any close bonds with them early on. We never got to do a stretch of shows with them like we did with a lot of other bands in the scene. It’s why I really wanted to get them involved with this tour, and we’ve started to get along with them pretty well.
Sean: I know they are big anyway, but I can see Wonk Unit getting bigger, and they are the best they have ever been in a long way. That lineup they have now just looks unstoppable.
Joe: I suppose those cunts in Faintest Idea are doing alright as well, I suppose they did a good album.
Sean: The Meffs are doing really well as well
Joe: Yeah I’m excited for them at Handfest.x There's loads of exciting bands.
You can check out MAK's review of "Random Hand" here.