King Futile — Casual Misery
King Futile is the new project from Scotland-based Lea Cummings( Kylie Minoise, Official Music Team, etc), and it’s a big departure from his normal noise or retro sample & electronica sound. Casual Misery is the project's debut, taking in eight tracks of lo-fi acoustic music, with an outsider feel, and often quite tongue-in-cheek/ sharply sarcastic tone to the lyrics.
The release appears on Lea’s own label, Kovorox Sound. It comes in the form of a CDR, presented in a clear slip with back & front covers taking in fitting crude white texts on a slightly hazed photocopy-like black backdrop. Not sure on the numbers for this release- but I’d imagine it’s fairly Ltd, to buy direct drop here
We open with the steady, blunt strums and torture-focused lyrics of “In Hell”- which sounds like Syd Barrett on downers sipping Special Brew. As we move on, we have the crude/ slow waltzing quality of “I’ll Be Happy You're Dead” with its lyrics mixing stark sweary-ness and off-kilter dark humour touches.
Later on, we have the crawling strum & glum swagger of “Video Nasties” which finds Mr Cummings awkwardly warbling/ wailing out titles featured on the UK video nasty lists of the early 1980s. The release plays out with instrumental track “Zelda 1” which is a mix of bleak & harmonic strums, with the whole track having a rather evenly rocking/ slightly swirling quality about it.
As mentioned at the top of the review, Casual Misery is most definitely something a little different from Mr Cummings. Yet it still retains the same wonky charm and lopsided creativity of all of his work. I certainly look forward to hearing more from King Futile.