Video Of The Day The Membranes
The Membranes live by John Middleham
Here are The Membranes from Manchester – Peter Byrchmore (guitar), Nick Brown (guitar), Rob Haynes (drums), and John Robb (vocals and bass) – a renowned TV and radio pundit, editor of Louder Than War, a key UK music site and national magazine, and curator of the Louder Than Words festival. Last June 2019, they published their long-awaited new album ‘What Nature Gives… Nature Takes Away’ via Cherry Red Records, an album that took them to the airports before the Corona attack. Speaking about this pretty nasty-corona-case which carries along with some shitty behaviour from the nations’ administrations and with the rest of the ‘side-effects’ meaning lockdowns, and the ‘required’ new flesh ‘crisis’, Mr Robb took a walk in the abandoned streets of Manchester-now to make the official video of ‘The City Is An Animal (Nature Is Its Slave)’ which was published on May 9.
The statement of the frontman is as striking as a dagger on the hearts of us all
“The Membranes ‘The City Is An Animal (Nature Is Its Slave) footage shot late night post-midnight in the virus city of Dystopia during the 2020 pandemic…in the flickering lights and neon embers and the ghost like passer byes that backdrop the strange post-apocalyptic vibe of the nocturnal pandemic…”
and this is not at all like we and him are whining on the WHO measures which we all had to logically follow if we only cared a bit for our fellow global citizens, but it is he who mostly underlines the new world order in the pandemic.
Dystopia means lockdowns in every city and every town like empties from urban life, the worst-case scenario as applied by the ‘almighty administrations’. Sadness, anxiety, and if it was very cool (in the first place) to walk the empty cities like a stray cat alone, then comes the brain like shouting “what is this, where are we all, why such silence everywhere“…‘The City Is An Animal (Nature Is Its Slave)’ is a very ‘cool’ song and now I laugh at me because you see, post-punk is never a ‘cool’ kind of kick but the real narration of times. Very often, there is nothing ‘cool’ in our human timeline…
..and it was as easy as a single breath for the band to create such musings as they were formed in 1978 in Blackpool, The Membranes, and they play classic bass-driven northern post-punk as part of the same world as bands like The Fall, Sisters Of Mercy, Echo and The Bunnymen and Cabaret Voltaire, all inspired by 1977 to launch their own idiosyncratic journeys. The band has released a remarkable series of records that combine their small-town frustration with a love of heavy bass and distortion! That’s all from me and here is their latest studio album in case you need more ‘explanations’ on the old-firm Manchester post-punk tribe, loud please, loud!!!
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Written by Loud Cities Mike
The Membranes photo by Harry Stafford
