The Mortal Prophets, fronted by John Beckmann, are a rather genre-bending band, heavily inspired by pre-war blues icons such as Lead Belly and Blind Willie Johnson and are becoming rather well known for creating songs that make you think about things in a different way. Nowhere is this perhaps more evident than on their new single “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” (featuring Gary Lucas), which XS Noize are proud to premiere.
The track is the second to be lifted from their debut EP ‘Stomp The Devil’, set to drop on July 8, about which Beckmann says: “My goal with the first EP ‘Stomp The Devil’ was to combine two strong influences of mine, very early pre-war blues with experimental electronica, groups like Can, NEU!, Harmonia and Cluster, and even Suicide, in a new way.”
He further explains: “You can think about it in this way: In the introduction, The Raw and the Cooked (1964) French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss writes of his confidence that certain categorical opposites drawn from everyday experience with the most basic sorts of things — e.g. ‘raw’ and ‘cooked,’ ‘fresh’ and ‘rotten,’ ‘moist’ and ‘parched,’ and others — can serve a people as conceptual tools for the formation of abstract notions and for combining these into propositions, or as the surrealist André Breton discovered the singular phrase that became foundational to the surrealist doctrine of objective chance: ‘as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.’”
Asked how the EP highlights and emphasises the music he genuinely wants to make and loves, he shares: “I’m very interested in building up a deep sonic atmosphere. There’s a certain uncanny quality to the music as well; one that reflects my love of German cinema from the ‘20s. Werner Herzog, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Kenneth Anger…films that possess magic.”
Listen to ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen’ – BELOW:
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