Misled Convey x Kat Five – Apply the Pressure (Dubmission Records)
Finding an old Soviet-era spying device at an East London car boot sale set Michael Hodgson AKA Misled Convoy off on a creative mission to which Kat Five (Feral Five) signed up for vocal duties. The resulting single, Apply The Pressure, is out now on Dubmission Records.
Artist: Misled Convoy x Kat Five
Track: Apply The Pressure
Label: Dubmission Records
Released: 22 January 2021
Find it: Bandcamp | Spotify
“Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move. An army without secret agents is exactly like a man without eyes or ears”, so comes the instruction from the ancient self-help of military strategy The Art Of War by Sun Tzu.
What agent informed, what action may have been planned from the overheard conversations captured on the Soviet-era spying device found at an East London car boot may never be known but using it as the base of a clarion call to join a discovered resistance seems a rather wonderful subversion.
Apply The Pressure – the collaborative single from Misled Convoy and Kat Five – does just this. Using the found sounds they have built futuristic tones adding deep bass and layered beats, warm horns and spoken word for something which sits between Trip Hop and Two-Tone as it draws you in. There’s much to enjoy in the back story of how this track came about, but that needs to wait for this infusion of old-world with futuristic sounds, this warm melody with cool vocal delivery, the organic bass against synthetic beats – well, that’s all come together as a rather stunning single and it needs your attention right now.
‘Out of the darkness / The new light comes’
Misled Convoy is no stranger to adding visuals to his music and here is the eyes of the spying-devices ears, capturing not only what is but what is to come. The video builds out the imagery and feel of the song, posing Kat Five as oracle ushering in this new age over footage of protests, recording devices, and telex scripts, all shot through with graphics which only become more positive about the new world emerging as the song goes on.
To take inspiration from the snippets of stolen conversation held in this Cold War relic and build out a sermon of optimism and hope for better days is a brilliantly creative act of everyday resistance. Turning their information gathering into instruction giving set to a fusion of sounds conjured by dispersed musicians working collaboratively starts to reclaim something which was, in more than one way, lost.
Apply The Pressure by Misled Convoy x Kat Five is out now digitally via Dubmission Records.
Find Misled Convoy: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp | Spotify
Find Kat Five: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp | Spotify
Artwork: kennardphillipps.com
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Sarah Lay
A long-standing music journalist she's also co-founder of independent record label Reckless Yes, an author of novels, and when not messing around with words and music, a digital strategist.
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