Review: Dragoman, Underbelly (Album)

NO COMPROMISE: Dragoman and the smoky melancholia of Underbelly

Experimentation is one of the most rewarding things about music. It’s really all about the incremental screw ups.

Tom Hackwell is not a man to flitter when it comes to time. When I arrive at his studio in central Clifton, it’s early afternoon and he’s already cracked open a rather expensive looking bottle of whiskey. “Fancy one?”, he asks, tweaking the microphone for our interview. I balk, sticking to my espresso. As the frontman for established swamp rockers, Armchair Committee, I wonder why, just as the band gain even more momentum, a push toward solo work has now become so important. 2016’s Underbelly , Hackwell’s debut under his Dragoman pseudonym, carries an explorative air to excitingly textured heights. Released via Hackwell’s and Armchair Committee bassist Dave Larkin’s label Deaf Endling Records, the album plays like a slew of sonic vignettes, a diary of inspirations and observations, showing an artist digging deeper and deeper in to his own process. “The band deserves more than to have my songs shoehorned into our sets”, he says, “but it was just the right time. There were things I wanted to explore, sonically and in terms of songwriting”. Indeed, with the album being written over a three year period, melding together the likes of Tom Waits, PJ Harvey and Leonard Cohen, you get the sense that the gestation period had bubbled to such a point where the internal clamour was irrepressible. “I couldn’t have written this album five years ago and for a number of reasons. The main thing is just a natural development to my songwriting, how to put stuff together, really crafting it. I’ve learned to give a song the time and energy that it needs.”

What sets Underbelly apart is its respect for experimentation and utilising the studio itself as another colour in the palette. Co-production from Brendan Davies helped foster Hackwell’s “anything goes” aesthetic, creating a richly diverse and layered soundscape behind solid melodic-ism. “From the start, I wanted the album to have sonic cohesion. Brendan jumped on that and so we started reamping instruments through the studio bathroom. We had a makeshift mixing desk that we used to split the signals out from the computer, so you could switch between whether you were signalling to the valve guitar amp, PA or monitors. We had brass player parts reamped through guitar amps in other rooms. You end up with this overwhelming amount of freedom in terms of what you can capture. It’s exciting to mess things up a bit. Who says you can’t get a great sound from a bathroom?” Interestingly, several of the microphones used for the recording were built by Hackwell himself who, in his spare time, runs Wasaphone, a business specialising in custom-made microphones. The company’s ‘Pipe & Slippers’ microphone, of which only one was ever made, was used for the sessions. Containing elements from old telephones, the microphones give the recordings a sound similar to that of carbon dust mics used by the likes of Robert Johnson. The resulting vibe smacks of a 1930s Mississippi hotel room. Environment, again, appears key. “Yes, definitely”, Hackwell enthuses. “Most of the tracks were recorded just sitting around at home, on holiday with an acoustic guitar, at the piano, wherever. You can hear the locations creep into each track, not in terms of the locale itself but more so where I was in my life at the time, what I was listening to”. 

In fact, work on the album wasn’t just limited to studio confines: the album’s opener, ‘Beachcoma’, a dreamy guitar piece, was recorded within Buckingham Chapel in Clifton, capitalising on the building’s natural reverb. The effect as such is one of distance, of gaze. Hackwell comes off as journalist to his inner environment as it reflects on the outer and the disparities apparent between them.

Indeed, central to the album’s tone is a conflict of internal versus external, a need to appear grating against a palpable unwillingness to compromise. “It was very much an attempt to make an accessible album that was also quite twisted”, he states. “I want people to hear that but also be able to hum along. It’s a real art to keep the soul of a song intact whilst also doing something interesting around it, something that’s “you” in there”. The title track seems to capture the battle perfectly, combining a spare, singular beat and subtle reverb guitar melody: “I never stood a fighting chance/thought I could fit into the everyday mould”, he whispers. Deftly threading this line of discontent further is the tribute ‘Poor Old Frankie’. The track highlights Americana singer/songwriter Frank Fairfield’s disillusionment with the music industry at large, culminating in a rather pitiful and awkward concert to a crowd of just 40 people. Fairfield’s demise could almost be the album’s most pertinent diary note, a stark reminder to Hackwell of his own musical obligations, lest he forget. “It’s the musician’s responsibility to create work that is a true artistic representation of who they are. When that’s lost, it becomes about money or “success”. You’re done for at that point, artistically”

Underbelly continues its slalom from self-reflective balladry into all-out nihilism. ‘Broken Toys Song’, perhaps the most dense and accomplished track on the album, feels like a gleeful push toward one’s own demise. Circus-like piano noodles swirl mercilessly with live brass, militant percussive rhythm and schizophrenic vocal effects, dragging us from melancholia to mania. What begins as a palatable show tune disintegrates into aural chaos, the percussion and brass sections banging and shrieking into a deafening miasma. Nowhere more evident is Hackwell’s middle-finger to the mainstream than here. What’s more, it’s bloody enjoyable; a testament not only to his impressive songwriting, but to the performances of the musicians called in to work on the album, including Tom Allen of The Zen Hussies who assumed double bass duties. Underbelly closes with ‘Beach in Bali’, an ode to the plight of Lindsay Sandiford who [at the time of writing] sits on death row in Indonesia following a drug smuggling conviction. With appeals declined, Sandiford’s present optimism for release seems to jut against the realities of her immediate environment. To this end, it’s a perfect parallel to the album’s narrative. Anthemic piano chords and an almost grandiose vocal line provide a satisfying juxtaposition, shimmering to an abrupt close, leaving us with a feeling of many questions still unanswered.

Underbelly triumphantly bangs, crashes, ebbs, flows, sways and swoons from a hotbed of smoky self-critique and discontent. An acoustically delicious back and forth between inner and outer. Yet despite its dichotomous nature, the album never falters. Hackwell’s real success here is managing to keep all of the seemingly disparate strands together in a way that leaves their colours resting beautifully against one another. It marks the first rumblings of an artist impressively assured in his own process and with a single-minded acceptance of whatever road that takes him on. “If the audience likes what you do, they’ll come and see you. Compromise shouldn’t enter into it.”

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LIVE at The Golden Lion, 12th March 2017