The Windey Man

The Windey Man

Justin Maxwell [Palette]

21 February, 2009 | 4.58PM

• Written by: Ryan Keeling
• Filed under: Music Recommendations: justin maxwell, palette recordings

It was a cold and indistinct January morn in the Beatportal office. A guest mix John Tejada put together for Mary Anne Hobbs’ sometimes excellent Radio 1 show was seeping from the speakers.

As Tejada’s mainly solid selection was nearing its conclusion, a horrendous belch of a noise was omitted from the desktop soundsystem; the audio equivalent of a bum regurgitating his mud supper, if you will. 

The ungodly din, I later learned, was the title track from Palette Recordings mainstay Justin Maxwell’s ‘The Windey Man’ EP. Now I for one am rather fond of having a bit of dirt under my nails from time to time, and have grown to regard this track as a bit of an ‘alternative anthem’. 

What was not clear from hearing the track in the context of a mix, was the range of unseemly flavours the track runs its hairy tongue over before reaching its climatic moment of filth. An initially terse arpeggio gives way to a pleasantly deranged pad while being pressed aggressively to the floor by the simplest of drum tracks. The frequency range is then swept clear, laying down a path for aforementioned bass racket to do its dastardly deed. The sound grabs you by the hair and pulls hard for a tense four minutes before finally freeing its grasp and scurrying off into the night.

Oh, and B side is pretty good, too.

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