Slow Draw Posts New Video/Single “Living in a Land of Scarecrows”
Hurst, Texas-based solo experimentalist Mark Kitchens, who operates under the moniker Slow Draw and doubles as drummer/noisemaker in Stone Machine Electric, presents a relevant take on the zeitgeist with the new EP, Living in a Land of Scarecrows. A proverbial song for our times. Samples tell some of the story across the 23-minute track that comprises the entirety of the EP, but not all of it. “If I only had a brain” from The Wizard of Oz precedes a full delve into SunnO)))-esque drone-wail, which is twisted and manipulated. It sounds for a time like Kitchens is shoving the guitar downward, but it settles into a figure that’s riff-adjacent, and unfolds across a first half that manages to shift from that initial cacophony to something more of a slog, the long repetition and pre-midpoint slowdown feeling like a ready stand-in for everyday horrors and/or the disconnection therefrom.
Kitchens references the “current state of things” as his impetus, and as he notes the sonic departure that is “Living in a Land of Scarecrows” — with that as an implied intellectual assessment — the timing is made all the more political by a release set on the US presidential inauguration day, earlier this week. I recognize the possibility that he’s talking about something else entirely. It’s a big universe and anything can happen in it.
And I don’t know about you, but my disassociated ass would rather watch the slow-motion horror of Slow Draw‘s “Living in a Land of Scarecrows” than the news, which I’m working hard to live distantly from. I’ve been paying attention every day since 9/11 and for what? To see my home nation go full-idiot over a crypto-dealing felon selling himself on messianic promises as the second coming of Big Daddy Ronald Reagan? Thanks, but I’m 43 and I know I should be line fight-fight-fight vive la résistance and such, but I just don’t have it in me. The world already sucked and it’s going to get worse whether I take time out of my day to feel bad about it or not. I don’t want to know. I might be done voting as well, with the given options being fascists, democrats, and worse still somehow, fascist democrats.
I could go on for a while here about “things” and their “current state,” and clearly in his own way Kitchens is ready to do likewise. Video follows here. Please enjoy. May we all survive these times and the wanton corruption and cruel hubris of idiots. If you’re fighting the good fight, thanks. The rest of us are better for that.
Again, visual horror awaits. Be ready for it:
Slow Draw, “Living in a Land of Scarecrows” official video
The current state of things generated this output, as it is not what I was initially working on in my current songwriting phase. This was not the next album I anticipated making, but here we are. This one will hopefully cleanse the palette of your mind.
Man, I’m right there with you!