McDead – Queen City Sounds and Art

McDead’s “90” is a Cinematic, Psychedelic Big Beat Dub Dance Banger

You never quite know what you’ll get when you listen to a McDead song. Kev Edinborough’s influences and inspirations are diverse and seemingly hitting him in a serendipitous an intuitive fashion from track to track. “90” sounds like it crawled out of some hip post-Bristol trip-hop heyday and aftermath of the Hacienda closing in Manchester underground. It has a solidly moody, fuzzy bass line that pulls us in immediately to be swept up in psychedelic shimmer, breakbeats and an echoing keyboard melody that surrounds and drops in and out of the track while heavily processed soulful vocals haunt a deep inner place of the song. The subtle stereo effects in the production is masterful in placing the sound in and the way the tones decay in the delay and seem to swim around and linger briefly or hang and resonate into the ether. The song is impressive for how it has multiple hooks that make it memorable listen that stays with you. It belongs in a Jim Jarmusch film. Listen to “90” on Spotify and follow McDead at the links below.

McDead’s “Old Sparky” is Like a Modern Library Music Companion to a Retro Science Fiction Film

One might be excused for having a different set of expectations with the title of McDead’s “Old Sparky.” It’s not a nostalgic punk song or pop ballad tribute to an old pet or car. It’s like an alternative soundtrack to Fantastic Voyage and the sound of fluid churning and flowing around you as the spectral synth stream distorts and stretches in tone counted out by a simple melodic arpeggio that shifts throughout the trip. It all sounds bright and shiny and enigmatic. It has that library music quality and thus the vintage science fiction film soundtrack comparison and thus out of step with normal time as it was obviously crafted using modern methods yet captures the aesthetic essence of a bygone era. Listen to “Old Sparky” on Spotify and follow McDead at the links below.

“Olympic Skeleton” by McDead is Like an Instrumental, Wire-esque Soundtrack to the Exploration of Past Sites of the Olympics

If Wire had done a more pop score to the 2022 Winter Olympic games it might sound a bit like McDead’s instrumental post-punk song “Olympic Skeleton.” The driving, angular guitar lightly distorted with a touch of fuzz, playful interludes with call and response with synth bell tones, accented leads, start and stop dynamics that come off like freezing on an image for a second before the tenor of the song switches. Yet there’s a brightness to the song that contrasts a bit with the image conjured by the song title which might make those in the know recall the 2010 horror film Frozen (nothing like the beloved 2013 Disney animated feature). But there are no dire endings here and no morbid tones which gives the song a surreal aspect like someone years from now finding a skeleton from a lost fan or competitor found while excavating a former Olympic site and pondering on who that person is and how they got to be there. Perhaps it’s all just a play on words with the name of the project in mind and/or an oblique commentary on what happens to the sites of Olympics once the games move on to the next country following all the development no longer always put to civic use. And on that note, check out the song on Bandcamp and explore the works of Kev McDead by following him at any of the links below.