--Ada Wofford
---Released 10 March 2020
Future Pope is the project of one Callum Taylor who adores lo-fi in every way possible. This short EP, written, performed, and produced almost entirely by Taylor proves his affinity for all things fuzzy, muffled, and drowned-out. If you’ve followed this site at all, you know I love this sort of stuff. Title track, “Communist Spy” (produced by Joe Doyle) sounds like Agent Orange mixed with Guided By Voices. In fact, I found Future Pope through a Guided By Voices fan club. The second track, “Vitamin D” sounds like The Kinks heard the Beach Boys “Vegetables” and decided to get wasted and make their own sickly-warbly homage to something healthy—It’s fun, it’s upbeat, but more importantly it’s weird. The finally track, “Rise of the Incels” is reminiscent of Half-Man Half-Biscuit until it becomes reminiscent of The Vaselines and Elephant 6 B-Sides. Taylor had this to say about his process and inspiration:
So, for a lot of my childhood I would always be recording songs on my laptop mic, they would sound horrible but to me as long as the melody shines through, I wasn't bothered. I write the songs I want to hear and in fact Robert Pollard had a massive influence on me as he taught me there are no rules in writing and it's for pleasing yourself not others. For this upcoming release I've been using home recording software, mainly a second-hand old Epiphone guitar plugged into an audio interface followed by electric drums played terribly by myself. I love having an organic lo-fi sound, it needs to sound genuine. And I actually edit all my tracks with Audacity despite that software being looked on as quite frankly shit—but it’s what I've grown up with and I'm used to.
All and all this EP is just fun and unique. Taylor does his own thing and gets the most out of his equipment. If you love lo-fi or you’re just looking for something different, than check out Communist Spy. You can purchase it here or stream it on Spotify. Listen to "Communist Spy" below:
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