Track By Track: Golden Toad – Unite The Worms

Unite The Worms was Album of the Week for The Quietus, and once you hear it, you’ll know why they were captivated by Golden Toad’s debut.

Golden Toad is the nom de guerre of Al Brown, known for his role in Japanese Television – one of the best live acts ever, in my opinion. Unite The Worms is an album that does contain hints of that band, but heads in different directions: cosmic, minimal, and motorik, often simultaneously.

It’s not initially that easy to process, but you quickly come to appreciate the beauty between the silence and the noise, and the constantly-evolving interaction between the two. In an age when listening to music is often passive or incidental, Unite The Worms needs to be fully engaged with in order to fully appreciate how Brown finds the strange beauty in this futurist take on psych.

A big thank you to Al Brown for giving us this series of pen pictures of the songs that make up the album.

GET OUT

Slow ominous build. A feeling of defiance. The percussion was played on a random cheap djembe, and added as a final thought but transformed feel.

MIND FUCK

An interlude.

TIME

Monotony. Life. Loops. Krauty bassline. Layered with angular fuzzed guitars against a looping angelic melody.

THREE KINGS

A stolen moment where everything feels serene.

TIME TO GO

Haunting. Confused. Cathartic. Rebirth. The light and the dark of life. A mirage in our conscious. Feels like one of the more traditional song structures.

CHASING BLISS

The never-ending search for something more. Angular, distorted, fucked.

THE METAL DETECTOR

Engaging with more industrial sounds against a trip hop beat. Sound samples used of metallic objects being hit. Drenched in reverb, and delay. Searching whilst protecting.

CREEPER

Repetitive. A constant movement forward.

UNITE THE WORMS

A call to arms? The riff has a slight Arabic feel, shapes I’m interested in and like to explore.

I AM A GOD

An ode to life’s impertinence? One minute you feel you can do anything, the next like everything is out of reach. The most garage feel, channelling Meg White on the drums. Chorus goes into a weird half time.

WINDER

Techno beat. Korg analog synths intertwined. Rising. A feeling.

A HUMBLE DEATH

Disappearing beauty. Stillness. A never-ending and consuming love.

To be honest though. A lot of the songs come from a subconscious and this is a post rationalisation which I feel slightly uncomfortable writing. Each song is a gift to others and whatever meaning they wish to imbue. Or no meaning at all. Love or hate. That’s fine too.

Unite The Worms was released on the 5th of December via Tip Top Recordings, and can be picked up in digital and vinyl formats on Bandcamp. The LP is also streaming on Spotify and YouTube Music – follow Golden Toad on Instagram for more listening options.

Header photo by Luis Kramer