NEW Soft Hearted Scientists
‘Waltz of the Weekend’ by Soft Hearted Scientists is 72 minutes of wondrous sounds from Cardiff’s wizards of psychedelia. Order it here
Worth the time…
“The album is too good for me to comprehend, right now. (I’ll need a month, I think).”
Adam Walton
INTERESTING AND QUITE HUMBLING TWEET FROM BBC RADIO WALES PRESENTER ADAM WALTON ABOUT OUR NEW ALBUM “WALTZ OF THE WEEKEND”.
I agree it takes quite a while to take in the 75 minute beast we have created. It took 600 hours to create and I’m still taking it in myself as it sprouted several new tentacles at the mixing stage and grew in front of our eyes and ears.
I’m so glad I spent so many days in Franks studio through a shitty winter in Grangetown finalising this epic. I can’t imagine a more productive use of my time and a bigger two fingers to bleakness.
Listen to Adam’s 27 May show here, where he plays “What Grows Inside the Garden?” from “Waltz of the Weekend.”
AT LAST! THE RETURN OF THE SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS!
After quite a long hiatus, not helped by a global pandemic and various unpleasant life events, the Scientists return with “Waltz of the Weekend,” their biggest and most ambitious studio album yet!
“Waltz of the Weekend” is a 75-minute double album wild beast crammed on to a single CD to keep the cost to an outrageous £9.99 for the standard CD.
It features 12 tracks.
Four of these are compact radio friendly psychedelic pop singles with huge choruses. They are “What Grows Inside the Garden?”, “Rode My Bike”, “The Fixer” and “Vicious Vivian”. Each one is stuffed to the eyeballs with vocal and instrumental hooks that take several listens to become fully apparent.
But there are also many tracks that stretch out and enter new territory.
“Waltz of the Weekend” is a psychedelic waltz inspired by a day trip to Tintern Abbey. It features an outrageously over-the-top haunted middle section that sounds like “Bohemian Rhapsody” performed by ghost monks, with Hank Marvin playing surf guitar in another dimension.
“Sea Anemone Song” is a huge heartbroken psych ballad, channelling a lot of the awful things that have happened in the last 3 years, with an end section that gradually disintegrates on an asteroid belt.
“Gadzooks!” is the coda to “Rode My Bike” and starts out as a psych rumble that gets progressively more insane, featuring a sly echo vocal nod to Bowie’s “The Bewlay Brothers”, crazed guitars, a string section, speaking in tongues and an ending FAR more over the top than a Bond theme.
“Who Loves The Moon?” is SHS guitarist Paul’s favourite song EVER by SHS. It’s a multi layered lament to lost love with a haunted, ancient, Disney/Night of the Hunter movie feel, and SEVEN vocal tunes. Cashback!
“The Things We Make” starts as a psychedelic ballad about musical creativity itself, but with verses recounting a haunted evening in North Wales many years ago. Halfway through it falls apart after being hijacked by the ghosts of King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry and becomes an echo laden effects laden dub.
Order/purchase “Waltz of the Weekend” here
“Creepers and Vines” is a tongue in cheek “I’ll never get intoxicated again” hangover song that again transforms halfway through into a series of transitions, sections and sound events that might have your head spinning even without intoxicants.
“The Venus Flytrap Song” is a full-on story song in which Nathan is unjustly on trial for an unspecified crime, but escapes the clutches of a corrupt judge, jury and hangman baying for his blood. It is the most symmetrical song we have ever written. With added ELO vocoders!
Lastly, the longest and perhaps most ambitious song we have ever released. “Lost Mariners” is an 11-minute psychedelic seafaring ghost story sound journey epic, featuring an enormous amount of sound effects, sound events, San Francisco acid rock guitar solos, transitions, and a symphony of analogue synths at the end, hinting at the horror of haunting the seabed.
Frank Naughton produced the album and quite honestly he is a polymath and genius. He even invented some of the special effects on this album.