What am I doing to myself? Once more I find myself waking up in the Glasgow of some alternative reality where they don’t have knives but they do have art. Not the art of pretty pictures in the cubist style, of course, but the industrial style of pictures of dogs playing pool and smoking crack. The soundtrack to this delusion, or perhaps it is only an illusion caused by lack of fried chicken, comes from Speculum Bunny and her brooding sounds of impending transformation are collectively called “Hell’s Teeth”.
Words like basement, midnight, mysticism and existentialism come to mind as these eight hymns to impending Armageddon loop the machine in as a companion to an artistically styled statement on something. Something dark and indecipherable, no doubt, but something nonetheless and, with a downright inspired attempt at avoiding any form of commercial success, Speculum Bunny takes the mind of the curious – and the deranged, of course - off on a voyage to anywhere but redemption town.
This is, after all, esoterica. This might even be magic with hidden messages or subliminal suggestions camouflaging themselves in a dark, but blood red lined, robe with said robe having pockets full of long forgotten invocations that may, or may not, cause time to stop. Beware the black cat.
I don’t even know why I keep listening to this but I do. A spell has been cast, perhaps, as nothing here would ever be a hit single or the soundtrack to a montage in a successful television series yet there is that something that makes you keep on listening. Maybe it is the atmosphere that envelopes and enchants you or maybe it is just the joy that an excess of artificially enhanced pretension can bring or maybe you have just woken up in an abandoned theatre with nothing but the sound of an invisible piano resonating in your ears. Eternity is, after all, a bitch.
And you can get “Hell’s Teeth” on a cassette. Of course you can. There will always be cassette players in every reality except the one where you don’t know what reality you are in. Press play and proceed.