Review: Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate - 'One Word That Means the World (Arkhipov)' / 'Music for Dancing'
The first preview of their new album releases on Friday 05/04/2024
Here’s the first single from the new album, The Uncertainly Principle, by Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate. The band - Malcolm Galloway and Mark Gatland - combine prog/alt-rock, funk, metal, ambient, contemporary classical, minimalist, and electronica elements, and often explore scientific themes. This is the story of Soviet naval officer Vasily Arkhipov (1926-1998), who refused to agree to an action that could have led to nuclear war.
A suitably dramatic performance is driven by guitar and synth. The lyrics succeed in broadening one man’s moment of decision - to refuse to launch a nuclear missile and begin a chain of events that could end the world - to a decision for us all: “We don’t know who we are, till we’re forced to decide.” (Lyric by Malcolm Galloway).
Galloway’s vocals are strong and towards the end, he unleashes a guitar solo that builds the melody and quickens the drama.
I marched for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s, with insufficient realisation of how close we had come to all-out nuclear war just twenty years or so previously. Songs like this keep the ever-present risk of nuclear war in our minds (while wishing that wasn’t necessary). Songs such as this continue the folk storytelling tradition; simultaneously, the music sounds more prog than folk.
Music for Dancing is an instrumental of the type Genesis was sometimes fond of placing on a B-side. The band cuts loose, stretches out, and delivers an enjoyable track.
When the album arrives, it will undoubtedly tell more tales from the edges of science.
One Word That Means the World (Arkhipov) is released on 05/04/2024 via Bandcamp. This ties in with Bandcamp Friday, when Bandcamp waive their revenue share and passes it on to the musicians. Meanwhile the lyric video is on YouTube.
There’s also a free listening party on Bandcamp at 6:30 pm (London time) on 5 April 2024 - RSVP here.