Luft - Hellingly

Hellingly is the debut album by Luft, the Berlin based band led by former Toy frontman, Tom Dougall. Comprised also of Ani Mijatović (keys), Sam Davies (guitar), Rob Henderson (bass) and Aaron Singh (drums), the group formed after Dougall had relocated from London following his former band’s quiet shift into indefinite hiatus.

The change in locale provided a key catalyst for the songs that make up Hellingly, unlocking a number of feelings Dougall had been silently working through over the past few years, about music and art, about excess and endurance, about a version of the world now gone. It is both a London and a Berlin record, at first speaking to the shifting tides of city life caught in the prison of gentrification and a crippling cost of living crisis, and then of the hopes captured in the new energies of a new town. It is a nighttime record too, both wistful and urbane, romantic and nostalgic, rich with the absurd rituals of an old England (that aforementioned world likely now gone) and the exotic allure of a hedonistic Berlin not weighed down by the same ancient tropes but also charged with its own trappings. The album title makes reference to a former mental asylum that once stood near to where Dougall grew up in East Sussex, a symbol of a troubled alternative universe looming in the peripherals. Demolished in 2010 to make way for a new housing initiative, its spectre nonetheless looms in the mind’s eye, a fitting metaphor for the ideas that colour the 10 songs that now make up an album of the same name.

Produced by Auteurs/Black Box Recorder maestro Luke Haines, Luft were fortunate to find the ideal foil for their vision of England. Haines has written and sung many songs that explore a similar terrain, and is in possession of a track record well suited to the post-new wave elan and mordant sophistication that the group favour. These songs are invariably sharp and melodic, biting and sincere, burrowing into a rich tradition of kitchen sink storytelling that is instantly recognisable and still wholly their own. Dougall may be the chief writer, but Luft is most certainly a band effort, neatly completed by Mijatović’s spectral vocals and elegant keys, Davies’ lysergic guitar runs and the sensitive, tightly interlocked rhythm section of Henderson and Singh. Keen listeners will perhaps note the influence of the observational songwriting of the Kinks, the industrial sounding riffs of krautrock, and the outsider leanings of the likes of Lou Reed and Marc Bolan, though really these are just touchstones along the way. Hellingly is its own map of its creators’ route through strange worlds. This was England, if you like, as told from a view in exile, but still not quite far enough away to leave it all behind.

For fans of Magazine, The Auteurs, TOY, Pulp, early Eno, Ray Davies