The World's Greatest Mind

After their well-received official label debut, Lights Out on the Reservation, Sussex-based experimental post-punk outfit Be Kind Cadaver regale the listener with their mid-apocalyptic vision of modern Britain over the four tracks of The World’s Greatest Mind.

Be Kind Cadaver (BKC) began as an experiment. Following the dissolution of their former punk band, singer/synthesist Daniel Alexander Hignell-Tully and drummer/guitarist Leroy Brown soldiered on as a two-piece, without any ideas as to what kind of music they might make.

Aware that they wanted to experiment with the punk format, they began sharing a wild list of influences with one another; the rasping noise-rock of The Jesus Lizard, Duster’s melancholic slowcore, Mauricio Kagel’s avant-classical performance pieces, the country and western hits of The Highwaymen, the art-pop of Yeasayer… each new influence was used as a starting point to continually reimagine their core set of 5 songs.

Over a period of two years, the band constantly and dramatically reworked these songs in a myriad of live contexts, playing punk gigs in basements one month and synth-pop shows in cocktail bars the next. Improvised ambient sets would give way to industrial metal jams, psyche-prog sets mutating into avant-garde performance art. The same handful of songs would be torn apart and reconfigured, again and again, until the band at last settled on the final versions that would become The World’s Greatest Mind.

While the EP does draw from some disparate genres, the fusion of dark electronic elements and atmospheric rock influences is searing and seamless. Daniel and Leroy create a cohesive, and at times emotionally caustic, listening experience, even in its most noirish and experimental moments.

The 30-minute EP consists of four songs that blend industrial-tinged electro-pop with an art-punk aesthetic, tracks that employ big pop choruses yet eschew normative song structures in favour of noisy interludes and meandering ambient washes.