The Golden Dregs is a project led by Benjamin Woods. After releasing second album, Hope Is For The Hopeless last year, Woods is returning with an exciting re-working of the album’s title track. Made in collaboration with London based VOGUES, the new version adds syncopated beats, looping synths and saxophone to add a vibrant new sound to the already excellent song.
We sat down with Woods to discuss the music, literature and cinema that makes him tick. Here are his Sound & Vision picks.
THREE ALBUMS I LOVE:
Fetch The Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple
I can’t stop listening to this. I’m not really familiar with her but I need to go back and explore her catalogue some more.
Your Hero Is Not Dead by Westerman
Only four tracks at the moment but they’re all so good, I’m guessing there’s a full length coming soon.
Shortly After Takeoff by BC Camplight
Shortly After Takeoff just came out and its amazing. It’s only 30 minutes long, but feels so vast – there’s so much depth to the music and the lyrics are very likeable.
ONE FILM I LOVE:
Rolling Thunder Revue by Martin Scorsese.
This is on Netflix at the moment, and follows Bob Dylan’s mid-70s tour of smaller venues in provincial towns. It’s around the time Desire came out, which is one of my favourite Dylan records and the performances are amazing, and the more recent interview footage with Dylan is pretty entertaining. There’s some really great features with other musicians including Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. Mick Ronson’s guitar soloing gets a little tiresome though..
ONE BOOK I LOVE:
I have a huge stack of books I’m meant to be getting through right now, but I often struggle to get going. I tend to lean towards short stories and poetry. To me, it feels like it requires a real understanding of language for a narrative to be conveyed within a few pages or paragraphs, and I get the satisfaction of completion in a single sitting. An incredible example of this: Incarnations of Burned Children by David Foster Wallace. It’s a hard hitting and distressing read, but the way in which it is written is breathtaking. I think it can be easily found online, or its in his Oblivion Stories collection.
AN IMPORTANT SONG:
Winter Song by Michael Clark
Mike plays guitar in The Golden Dregs and I love him dearly. This is one of my favourite songs of his, and I’m proud to say I played drums on this recording of it.
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