DIVING BELL

ALBUM REVIEW
DIVING BELL, the excellent debut album by Oxford’s SANGUINE HUM. Featuring JOFF WINKS (vocals, guitars, drum programming and samples), MATT BABER (Rhodes, synthesizer, percussion, mini drum kit), BRAD WAISSMAN (bass) and PAUL MALLYON (drums, percussion, mini drum kit), the band was formed from the ashes of the Joff Winks Band and the Antique Seeking Nuns (a heady mix of Zappa and Canterbury influenced instrumental compositions with songwriting that owed much to artists such as Robert Wyatt). However, after a year of not performing live and only working in the studio, the need for the duo to be back in a band reached a feverish pitch. So with an ever-mounting pile of new songs the members of the Joff Winks Band came back together under the new moniker of Sanguine Hum, recording the album Diving Bell in 2011. Initially released in limited quantities on the Troopers for Sound website, the album is a complex ensemble work, featuring profound song writing, uniquely ambitious instrumental pieces and an equally important attention to the sonic landscape of the music as a whole, giving the band its defining characteristics. Sanguine Hum continue to pursue diverse areas of writing flitting between intense instrumental pieces and unorthodox songwriting. Influenced as much by Zappa and Mahavishnu Orchestra as they are by bands such as Tortoise, Sanguine Hum create avant-prog-post-rock with groove and melody to spare. This new edition of "Diving Bell” adds three new songs and sees the Oxford quartet consolidate an already remarkably varied career, showcasing a new and exciting immediacy in their song writing that recalls the very best of Radiohead, Porcupine Tree and the Flaming Lips.