When it comes to Sugar Horse, nothing’s conventional. In April this year, the band released their 2nd EP DRUGS – or, 29 minutes of genre-hopping bleakness encompassing everything from lush shoegaze and textured atmospherics to doom and 80s goth.
Today they return with a single which clocks in at over half the length of that five-track EP. The Great Shame combines grimy hardcore with mundane archive documentary footage, the result of which is something not massively far away from being a horror movie in its own right. The song jolts and squeals, allowing Sugar Horse to explore grimmer territories than they have before.
The footage used comes from a 1989 BBC documentary titled Heart Of An Angel, which captures the run-down Angel tube station in the days leading up to its refurbishment. The building is a grey, dilapidated product of the 1980s that’s been left broken beyond repair.
Speaking about the documentary, Sugar Horse vocalist and guitarist Ash Tubb says: “This film really rang true with the various mad things going on around the world at the time. A feeling of a huge change in the old guard. Destruction of old, long broken systems and the dissatisfaction of younger generations... They moved there for the chance of money and a more exciting life, instead they end up pulling human hair out of the railway tracks in the dead of night. ”
But in the people around the station, we see the cultured vibrancy of London breaking through the fog – and paired with this is a hint of hopefulness in The Great Shame.
Likewise, Ash began to look at manipulating the footage of Heart Of An Angel to flip it’s story into “something about moving out of the past and into the future. Looking back on the past with scorn and learning from the mistakes of those old guard who were too terrified to change.”
You can find Sugar Horse’s latest EP, DRUGS on Bandcamp. Sugar Horse are taking part in a socially-distanced live gig in Bath on November 7. Find details below.
