It is a great honour to release this exclusive single for BANG! RECORDS from HUGO RACE & THE TRUE SPIRIT. HUGO RACE keeps his characteristic intimist side in this single, bordering with the most sinister madness. A style he has been perfectly doing for more than 20 years in his native Melbourne, where he started with PLAYS WITH MARIONETTES, following with the legendary THE WRECKERY (a clear reference point for Jon Spencer), later on with ROWLAND S. HOWARD and as a temporal member of NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS, finally getting to his most personal project and his band for the latest 15 years: THE TRUE SPIRIT.
This is what Mr. Race says in relation to the songs of this single, his latest and quite possibly the best recording of his long career:
“READY TO GO is something like, I’ve got my shoes on, I’m leaving. Watch how I dissapear... READY TO GO was recorded live in Australia in a filthy club just by the sea in St. Kilda, in a hot summer night. I always wanted to release this song in a vinyl single, because of THAT sound. 3:30 minutes in the old 60’s style, through a glorious reverb radio tunnel... we were looking for the mirage-like Spectorsound, the FAT SOUND, that sound making so much sense coming off the muscle of the needle, the groove cut DEEP spreading simple messages like YOU GOT TO SHINE, SHINE A LITTLE EVERYDAY, girls looking in the mirror room like the RONETTES and the CRYSTALS, spinning at 45 RPM, translated to the trance pulse of the TRUE SPIRIT lost in rock’n’roll with their loose cannon synths and diabolic trombones and everybody kickin in the chorus like LSD is dead but NOT FORGOTTEN.
LOVES THE RAIN is the original reading of the mythic APOCALYPSE, master tapes lost for six years and rediscovered in a cracked suitcase stashed in a shack out on the fringe of the LITTLE DESERT west of Melbourne city, heat and flies, diesel mirages undulating like SUFI MYSTICS levitating off the dunes, SNAKE IN THE GRASS. Recorded in the city of Brussels on a diet of tour exhaustion long before the CHEMICAL WEDDING ever happened, sending a message to the scattered faithful not to lay down and give up but hang in there, KEEP IT ON at all costs ­ the struggle to disillusion and back again as the mushroom heads stud the gunmetal skies, the SPIRIT playing in acoustic style, pump harmoniums, banjos and analogue synthesis, ebo guitar like a nato jet, STICK TOGETHER DON’T GET TIRED and pretty soon the night begin to clear. And the rain come down.