Uber Rock review by Ross Welford

The great ability of this album is to transport you to places throughout the world, history or places that are only in your mind, so while Mötley Crüe would place you at a party or a strip club and Maiden into historic fights, SR manage to include everything from a post-apocalyptic earth to a spaghetti western saloon fight and on through to a Dune-style drive through the skies. Quite why this man isn't working on TV and film scores yet is as big a mystery as to why The Hip Priests are still playing small venues and walking the streets unknown.

Take a track such as 'The Emerald Shepherdess Part 1' and try not to think of Tarantino and his ability to aid the listener into painting a larger, fuller picture, or a song such as 'Surf's Down' with its hypnotic, futuristic sound. Even then it's not that simple with songs such as 'Rip Crackaway 2016' somehow managing to be futuristic and retro in the same few minutes.

Scant Regard still continues to be outside of what people would except as 'the norm' in music but that's exactly where Will Crewdson excels and 'Brush With Death' maintains his identity as an outsider and he remains someone who thinks and plays outside of the box with his integrity still intact.

More twang, more beats, more better.

"Will Crewdson is best known as guitarist/songwriter from glam punkers Rachel Stamp, as well as trusted sideman for Adam Ant and Johnette Napolitano, but he can also cook up an impressive racket on his own. Scant Regard is an unholy collision of Suicide, Link Wray and Ennio Morricone - what Crewdson dubs ‘Spaghettilectro’ - that kicks harder than one of Sister Sarah’s mules. Alongside surprisingly faithful covers of Kraftwerk and The Normal, the vicious riffage of ‘Kardinal Syn’ harbours the aggression of prime time NiN while the impressive ‘Misguided Missile’ is electronically-enhanced swamp blues filled with Western promise."

NEIL GARDNER, ROCK SOUND
FOR FANS OF: NiN, Rachel Stamp, 16 Horsepower


"From a 1950s teenage Americana of high school hell cats, jet propelled hot rods, a rumble on the docks and riding the wild surf, to the men with no name in the Wild West of the late 1800s re-envisaged through filmic Italian eyes in the 1960s. From the impeccably elegant and achingly sexy Spy-fi representation of 1960s London, to a Brutalist trip to Newcastle with Michael Caine in the early 1970s, and onwards to the late 1970s/early 1980s and an electronica rendezvous in the industrial German city of Düsseldorf, before a train ride back across Europe to an England popping with a newly synthesised sound. With Scant Regard’s second album, In a Primitive State of Neurotic Irresponsibility, with a slide along the fretboard of his Teisco guitar, one embarks on an highly evocative, time-travelling journey through a collage of genres, an inspiring and exhilarating fusion that melds flash-backs with the present moment, to create a perfect resonance for today.

Scant Regard is the alias and solo project of Will Crewdson, the London-based guitarist, writer, and producer, and the success of the hybrid Scant Regard sound, which he terms Spaghettilectro, is a testament to his explicit talents in all three of those creative disciplines. His stated intent for Spaghettilectro is that it “strives to fuse raw electronic beats and moods with the smooth, soaring sounds of [Ennio] Morricone’s biting guitar-scapes” which is then mixed up with “a little Link Wray style rock ‘n’ roll swagger”.

This is certainly carried into In a Primitive State of Neurotic Irresponsibility’s opening track, and as such, perhaps, its statement of intent come cri de guerre, I Make no Bones. Which starts with an impelling rhythm of crackling, running boots feedback, dissolved by a swirling Link Wray riff, this is a street fighting track, punchy beats, fingernail string slides that sound like knives being sharpened, and power chord stabs. It brilliantly reinvents and transports the spirit of Wray’s highly influential 1958 track, Rumble (on which he first showcased his distortion and feedback techniques and which is cited as being the first track to use the power chord), to the metropolitan streets of the 2010s.

This is followed by Scant Regard’s fantastic, epic, VistaVision, cover version of Kraftwerk’s 1978/1981 single, The Model, which also, in its smoky down strokes and impelling locomotive rhythms, has echoes of Kraftwerk’s earlier single, Trans Europe Express. Coupled to which, Scant Regard has met Iggy Pop and David Bowie in the dining-car and returns a little Lust for Life and glances from Station to Station with flair and affection.

Intriguingly his cover is far less voyeuristic than the Kraftwerk original. The subject has turned the tables, and is far more of a femme fatale; from the glowering, pouting, intro, through the Spaghettilectro riffs, this is a soundtrack chosen by the model herself; rather than, “she’s a model and she’s looking good”, if Scant Regard’s instrumental had lyrics they would be, “I’m a model and I’m looking good”. Adding further layers to the story, there are also in the plaintive glissandi and the tremolo sustains echoes of Roy Budd’s theme tune to the 1971 British gangster film, Get Carter, directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine. This model has a backstory that for your own safety it may be a good idea not to delve to deeply into.

With the second cover version on the album, The Normal’s Warm Leatherette, Scant Regard also pulls off the very difficult feat of bringing brilliant new layers to a track that not only already had a great original but also a very successful cover version by Grace Jones. His wonderful reimagining of the song brings it very much into the modern moment, with the lyrics, which were based on JG Ballard’s controversial novel, Crash, about symphorophilia / car-crash sexual fetishism, seemingly intoned by an increasingly demented and aroused sat nav, as the track builds faster and faster through spiralling guitar and mesmerising beats, before ending abruptly in oblivion.

Alongside these tracks, for me the other particularly stand out song on the album is the wonderful Misguided Missile, which whatever the intended target of its title very much hits the mark. It’s as though Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s Love Missile F1-11 has collided with The Tornado’s Telestar knocking it into an alternative orbit, or perhaps sending it on a slow fall to earth with a message of satellite love from the stars. The track tilts its hat to Joe Meek, and also carries the continuing echoes of Roy Budd’s Get Carter theme, and adds some Spy-fi elegance and thrills with a hint of Laurie Johnson’s theme to The Avengers television series. Throughout Misguided Missile Scant Regard skilfully manipulates a palette of emotions and tells a compelling short story in a variety of riffs, beats, and atmospherics.

This is true of the album as a whole. Although predominantly instrumentals, such is the richness of Scant Regard’s musical storytelling, and so myriad are the images and emotions that fill one’s head and one’s heart whilst listening to the album, that it’s a shock to realise that these fantastic short stories have been told without words. Upon listening to it you may well find that it already is, but I urge you to make In a Primitive State of Neurotic Irresponsibility the soundtrack to your life."

GUY SANGSTER ADAMS, PLECTRUM - THE CULTURAL PICK


"With Scant Regard's second album, 'In A Primitive State Of Neurotic Irresponsibility', Will Crewdson again wears his influences on his sleeve, and then runs it up the flagpole to be even higher than ever. Whilst his aim and ambition is realised with spaghetti western electro splattered fully across every track, it's often the electro part that comes to the fore. Kraftwerk, Sparks and Devo all get a look in and when added to the Link Wray influenced guitar twang, it's a work of completion that is so much more fluid than the debut and it's done so well that you can't help but think that Crewdson was wasted spurting out Rachel Stamp post punk angst rock numbers or playing guitar and looking pretty with the likes of Adam Ant or Bryan Ferry (I like Rachel Stamp by the way - Black Cherry!!!!).

Opener 'I Make No Bones' sets the tone and you realise that not only is this going to be a mainly instrumental album again but it's one that will keep you interested with plenty of curve balls along the way. A cover of Kraftwerk's 'The Model' follows it up and adds to the obvious class of the original - fans of the old version and fans who may have been bored of the original will both be happy. The Normal/Grace Jones oddity 'Warm Leatherette' pokes its head up through the mystery and you can see the influences and movie soundtrack base becoming ingrained into SR's psyche. Industrial, electro, spaghettilectro - call it what you want but it's hypnotic. 'Sneaking Into Godforsaken Territory' continues that hypnotic state and is simply a song for which TV and music videos were made for with its almost trance-like momentum pulling you in with every chord. Every track on this album is an exploration and each track rewards the listener with visions aplenty.

Whilst this might not be rock and metal enough for the casual listener of Uber Rock, those that love cinema, a slice of electro or those that are simply open minded enough, will raise a glass to Scant Regard because they'll see that we should be applauding the sheer brilliance of Crewdson's chosen path. Art house cinema will never appeal to the masses and that's why it'll retain the classic, cult status and that's why it's so loved - you're either in or out.

Will Crewdson and Scant Regard are in and they will no doubt reap the benefits of his choices.....if there's any justice."

ROSS WELFORD, UBER ROCK

Will Crewdson (Rachel Stamp, Adam Ant, Bow Wow Wow) joins forces with legendary drummer Dave Barbarossa (Bow Wow Wow, Adam and the Ants, Republica) for this exclusive release.

Scant + Dave = an invincible force of sense-pummeling burundi electro twang.