THE FRONT ROW

The Roadside Bandits Project is a vehicle for the endeavours of London based musician and producer Santi Arribas. It’s a vehicle packed with collaborators like Nell Bryden, Matt Johnson (Jamiroquai) and J.J. Sterry (Gang of Four). Listening to The Siberian Candidate it appears that the vehicle is travelling determinedly down a bleak, near-future highway.

The Siberian Candidate twists blues, psychedelia, rock and ambient themes around a stark electronic framework. It is an overtly political album that presents a soundscape in which to explore the issues of: government sleaze; mental health following the pandemic; and the condition of the UK following the Brexit referendum. The album contains a number of instrumental pieces, which added to it’s early electronic undertones endow it with a John Carpenter, cinematic soundtrack feel. Ideally it would play over a spaghetti western, or a film where Kurt Russell reprises his role of Snake Pliskin in ‘Escape From Brexit Britain’.

The album opens with Nothing a sad soulful, delta-bluesy tune, about the cost of living crisis. It is sung by it’s co-writer, one-time Gang of Four member J.J. Sterry. Down Down examines the state of post-pandemic, Brexit Britain. It merges blues and electronica and has resonant Nick Caveish vocals supplied by Julian Casewell (The King’s Pistol ) who co-wrote the song. Led By Donkeys is the first instrumental tune. It’s an extended guitar solo played over old school Giorgio Moroder beats and keyboards. The album’s title track The Siberian Candidate is another instrumental which starkly, sonically depicts a travelogue through a desolate landscape.

Reshuffle marks a slight diversion on the highway as it’s a no-messing, up-beat rock ‘n’ roll tune. It would be playing over a scene where Pliskin plots with the female lead in a run down bar full of shifty types, somewhere in Kent. It’s a critique of the number of Cabinet reshuffles that have recently occurred in the UK Government. These changes are reflected by the three distinctly differing stylistic guitar solos contained in the song.

Little Babylon is a full-blooded call to action that wonders why, after witnessing government corruption, the masses aren’t ‘storming the gates of Avalon’. C’mon is an edgy, hard blues-rocky nugget wrapped in a soulful, brass filled outer shell. Wastelands sees a Matt Johnson cameo on electric piano on a tune with psychedelic tendencies.

Time Again was initial intended to be another instrumental track but this soulful minor blues tune had lyrics added by Nashville based singer Tommy Smith. There is a return of Down Down (Highway Reprise) as an instrumental where the rock guitar riffs stand atop electronic rhythms that resemble Kraftwerk or early Simple Minds (I Travel). The album concludes with a slide guitar driven, ambient tune inspired by the life-saving work the RNLI and appropriately called Lifeboat. I can see Pliskin lighting a cigar, bobbing about in a dinghy somewhere in the English Channel, mission completed, as the credits roll.

If The Siberian Candidate had been released in the Seventies then it would have been dubbed a concept album. It has reoccurring themes, a narrative, and a natural flow. It’s the type of album that should come in a gatefold cover, with loads of sleeve notes to read, as you listen to it immersed with your headphones on.

The Siberian Candidate is out now on Dharma Records and is available to stream and download. If you’re a fan of such disparate artists as Ry Cooder, Pink Floyd, and Kraftwerk then there may be something here for you.

Ian Dunphy.