The Full Story
About Abominable Preachers
dance into the revolution with Waiting for the Rising unto
THE COMIC SONGS:
ORANGE GOBLIN, + ME & THE ROBOT
THE ORANGE GOBLIN describes the history of the US up until the arrival of Donald J. Trump without mentioning either. Its point of view being from a distant future, looking back on the subject as if it were a mythical place that has long since vanished but was once a paradise of freedom and consumerism. The point of the ballad is therefore to sustain "What happened?" to the Utopia. Why did it disappear? Using the Groove Agent drum machine, and Halion’s great supply of virtual instruments, Orange Goblin was crafted without guitars at all. It has a country feel, certainly, but Adkin was clearly starting to move into new electronic areas of production.
ME AND THE ROBOT is a deliciously 'bad' song. Lo-fi at its most miserable in this narrative that defends the human against AI because "a robot will never sing as badly as I do". This track does bring the acoustic guitar back again, twanging almost as out of tune as the vocals, but the main protagonists are a virtual sax and a Moog. Obviously, as the song was pre-empting the current age of AI musical programmes capable of creating perfect music in any style. When competing against perfection, imperfection becomes a necessary virtue.
ART & LITERATURE:
GERNIKA, ART IS A NATURAL INSTINCT & ELSINORE BLUES
Adkin was already interested in getting across anti-war messaging and also wanted to do something with a flamenco feel that would suit his Takamine nylon string guitar. The result was GERNIKA. Gernika refers to the Basque town that was blitzed by Nazi aviation during the Spanish Civil War, and was the subject of Picasso's famous masterpiece.
ART IS A HUMAN INSTINCT is a vindication of all creative works, but, ironically, in a very traditional way that is hardly creative at all. The piece, coming here in this first album and all its incipient naivety, is therefore self-critical at the same time as vindicating the amateur approach to art, created from the need to do, and the authentic love of creation above all else.
ELSINORE BLUES is a bright, fun blues about Hamlet, the famous Prince of Denmark and his adventures and misadventures in the ‘rotten’ state of Denmark.
BLUES & APPALACHIAN
WORDS ARE WORDS, I TOLD THE TRUTH, & THE SECRECY
WORDS ARE WORDS is an acoustic blues, played with a steel string box guitar in open tuning and a slide bottle. The song was inspired by the absurd arrest in Spain of a group of puppeteers, accused of inciting terrorism in their Punch & Judy show. A droning, bluesy plea for freedom of speech.
I TOLD THE TRUTH is another acoustic piece with an accompanying harmonica, concerning the systemic intolerance of truth, while
THE SECRECY is a Doc Boggs style banjo driven song, starting off in the Appalachian style, gathering in momentum and force as piano, drums, muted trumpet and orchestral strings, growing darker and darker until it erupts in a forceful electric guitar climax. A song that deals with cover ups.
ACOUSTIC:
THE DEED IS DONE, IN THE GOLDEN AGE, NOT THE RIGHT WAY
THE DEED IS DONE: acoustic guitar accompanies banjo in this basic ballad about the system's pillaging of the planet's ecosystem.
IN THE GOLDEN AGE has a naively folky feel about it in its simple optimism. The first part is sung over an acoustic guitar which is superseded by a strumming banjo in the second, up-tempo part.
NOT THE RIGHT WAY has a simple classical-feel arpeggio, plucked on the Takamine, underscoring this melancholy dirge about errors and loss, in all its forms.
DANCING WITH PREACHER DON, FROM ABOMINABLE PREACHERS, & THE END OF DAYS
DANCING WITH PREACHER DON was the first Madadkin track to incorporate electric guitar, Adkin's PRS Santana, and synth FX. With backing vocals from his nieces Paula and Lucia Lopez. The title song of the album
FROM ABOMINABLE PREACHERS lifts the preacher onto the more metaphoric level of any spreader of information or our society's ubiquitous venders of material goods. The music itself is a droning, miserable folk tune in E minor. In the
In END OF DAYS Madadkin looks at the impending fall of civilisation and preempts the later postpandemic works in denouncing the decadent system and calling for a necessary revolution. This apocalyptic work rocks, pushed along with a tight drum beat and funky, pulsating rhythm and lead guitars.