I am here & I am ignited.

...

Orphans & Vandals.

I can't remember how I found these Blighty blighters but a summer ago I did and I've not looked back since. Here's a smattering of words that can be conjured from their music: bohemians, red wine, ale, Withnail & I, battered classic cars, squalor, leafy parks, roll-ups, busking, cobbled streets, rags and decadence. I think it's the perfect music to read 19th Century literature to, or maybe beforehand, just to get yourself in the context of novels such as those by Zola.

The core of Orphans & Vandals is Al Joshua and his compeer, Raven, with whom Joshua first imagined this idea up two years ago whilst on a pilgrimage to the Paris of Arthur Rimbaud, French poet and Libertine. The product is a five-piece band of multi-instrumentalists who tambourine and violin their way through the spoken word (of what, at a stretch, verge on!) librettos of Al Joshua; their track Mysterious Skin is over ten minutes long. It's a city summer sound. Their album came out a mere 4 days ago, I Am Alive And You Are Dead. 

I'm having an existential crisis over which song to give...

have Mysterious Skin: Orphans & Vandals - Mysterious Skin (y.s.i.)

I think this was the song that banned them from the BBC. Good.

.x.

The boy/man above is a fellow admirer. I guess, my first disciple. Arthur.