Jagged Baptist Club release Haunted By the Night

Los Angeles noisesome foursome deliver new single

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Blowtorch Records' very own LA-based sonic warriors, and current favourites of none other than Radio X's John Kennedy, are back with Haunted By The Night. It's the third single from Jagged Baptist Club's soon-to-be released album Temptation Death House and was released on September 3.

When the band joined Blowtorch I welcomed them with a blog in which I said "their music sounds otherworldly; recognisable noise with nods to their European influences yet simultaneously like nothing else. Remote, alien and industrial indeed."

Nothing they have done since then has disabused me of that notion. They don't really sound like any other current band. Constructed around a fuzzy, growling groove that recalls Bauhaus or Public Image Limited at their most paranoid, anxiety builds throughout the song as each new layer is added until it climaxes with a chorus that sounds "like the Summer of Love soaked in acid rather than high on it."

From the initial reverb soaked drums and distorted bass to the scene-setting opening line "A doorway to walk through / a gateway to talk to", a slight sense of dread pervades this track. It's familiar but unsettling yet the chorus employs an almost jaunty sing-along style. It's clever, head-warping songwriting. And like all the tracks from this great band it has that dissolute, warped, neon-soaked sound which must surely stem from the psycho-geography of the City of Angels.

Having already had multiple plays on KCRW, Radio X and Amazing Radio, it's bubbling away, its lysergic-tinged content ready to boil over into brains open enough to receive it.

Blake Stokes, JBC frontman, reveals "the lyrics cover my time growing up in Houston, Texas but in the form of fever dream impressions and hallucinations, rather than literal biography. Haunted By The Night is crawling with unease and dread and you can dance to it.”

The track is out now on all streaming platforms and will shortly be available on a limited edition cassette sampler.

Listen to Haunted By The Night on Spotify

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