Tunng – Tunng Presents…Dead Club
Full Time Hobby – 6 November 2020
Since the release of their 6th album Songs You Make at Night in 2018, Tunng threw down the gauntlet of a collaborative death-themed 8-part podcast and album-zine. In the interest of the album, its adjoining podcast consisting of several professional bodies; philosophers Alain De Botton and A.C. Grayling, Max Porter, Derren Brown, palliative care physician Kathryn Mannix, and a forensic anthropologist are thrown into the equation, among others. Samples from the ongoing enterprise were used to compose the latest masterpiece, Dead Club.
The band challenge sacred self-exploration through unknown territories and familiar ones, it is a saturation of colour, insight, and creative process. Not unlike previous works, the album retains the quintessential Tunng abiding distinctions in sound, falling continuously into the folktronica category with conviction. The difference lies more in concept than in style, the idea derived from Sam Gender’s enquiring mind and the magic of a good book.
Death is the New Sex is evidently inspired by the language of grief, openness, or lack of, and why it is easier to bond over sex talk, than the loss of life. The voice of Tinariwen’s founding member, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, is heard closing A Million Colours in fluid French language. Having witnessed the execution of his own father, Ibrahim discusses the traditions surrounding death with his indigenes Tuareg.
From the mournful mechanisms of Eating the Dead to the cheery disposition of The Last Day and SDC, it holds a stimulating juxtapose of turbulent emotion and comedic subtleties. Derren Brown touches on storytelling above cool, celestial audio effects like so much of Tunng’s work, with the charm of a sunny, two-part harmony.
Dead Club rouses intrigue and contemplative practise, a deliberation of life for those yet to encounter grief, and death, for those yet to encounter dying, and what you should concentrate on therefore, is all the business of living, because the meditation of the wiser person, is a meditation of life. Dead Club is exactly this, a meditation of life, it is shaped by artistic, scientific, and philosophical participation and spoken word upon sound.
Current worldly affairs challenge existential questions on tragedy and hope, it is as far-reaching than any other topic. Perhaps Dead Club was a project, conveniently engineered only to provide relief in uncertain times. Loss, as a uniquely personal experience, is also what unites us, and that is what makes the album distinct. It is the bridge between technological advances and the tenderness of thought.
Read more about the DEAD CLUB project via the band’s site: http://tunng.co.uk/dead_club/about/
The Dead Club Podcast series – listen and subscribe here: https://smarturl.it/deadclubpod
Max Porter, Derren Brown, Kevin Young and Dame Sue Black episodes are out now. Listen back here:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6DwSsu0W1e3UEOxwDAmJpq?si=tpAaid7ESd2lL5-0HTMs5w
pre-order now: https://smarturl.it/deadclub