Moundabout, the duo consisting of Gnod’s Paddy Shine and Phil Langero (of Los Langeros, Damp Howl and Bisect) release their third album, Goat Skull Table, being a spell for passing between worlds. The album opens with a spectacturaly intense invocation, chanted by Langero, against a background of disturbed electronics which sound like the kind of noises ghost hunters wish they could record: the throbbing of a psychic helicopter, string glitches from the other side, lurching music propelled against its will by malign forces. Langero summons dark spirits in a voice haunted by strange elisions and sudden emphases, as though he’s not in control of what he says. “Come back goat, to this rotting crooown!” he leers. It’s truly terrifying – which is quite an achievement, as the line between scary and ludicrous is paper thin, especially when actual satanic invocations are involved.
Moundabout are for real, though, and we believe that they mean it. They have been a distinctive presence since their 2022 single ‘Bog Bodies’, the kind of song that rematerialises suddenly in the listener’s mind, years after they last heard it. Goat Skull Table is rooted in the mantic music made by the likes of Julian Cope and, before him, Comus. Nurse With Wound, explicitly, and Coil are also clear antecedents. There is also an intriguing link with other alternative Irish musicians from the folk scene, such as Lankum and John Francis Flynn, who understand the power of repetition, and lean towards drone.
The band came out of a megalithic roadtrip through the Irish Midlands to see Nurse With Wound, via the many stone circles, pillars, and passage tombs that mark transition points between one world and the next. Goat Skull Table is a trance album, but not as we know it. The opening chant is followed by two shorter tracks, like squeezing through the tight entrance to a tomb, before it spreads out into an inner space with two ten-minute dream-state tracks. ‘Brave New World’ and ‘Am I Not’ are summoning songs, played on acoustic guitar, blurring the distinction between life and death. ‘Blood on My Blanket’ and ‘Wagon’ go full fugue, spinning layer upon layer of repetition and shift. They are ecstatic pieces. If any album can succeed in breaking through the veil, this is surely it.
