THEE LUDDS are a fourpiece from Leicester playing repetitive, infectious astral punk. Featuring Daniel Kelly (vocals and organ), Robin Wright (guitar), Jack Squires (bass guitar) and Emily Warren (drums), Thee Ludds’ sound centers on a stripped back, primal drum and bass groove, surrounded with jittery guitar, piercing combo organ and gravelly vocal yelps. Their songs occupy a space somewhere between the mystical and the mundane and are underpinned by a restless post-punk tension.
Since forming in January 2010 Thee Ludds spent much of the next year practising and recording in the living room of their house, conditions which inevitably influenced the band’s DIY ethos. The entirety of Thee Ludds releases to date including two 7”s, a tape EP and the tracks that make up their side of the Palmist split, were all produced in this low-tech, self-recorded fashion.
Songs such as ‘Astral Plane’ and ‘Go Outside’ demonstrate the driving primitive beats and locked grooves that have become their trademark, whilst ‘Feeding Time’ and ‘Parabolic Reflector’ retain a sense of the raucous garage punk that first inspired them. What prevents Thee Ludds’ sound from drifting into pastiche is the shamanic wail and chatter of vocals that seek to guide their straightforward rock and roll songs into new and stranger territories.
