Fold are back with yet another heavyweight single in their latest speech sample soaked tracks, Two Past Midnight and Don’t Kid Yourself Baby, which pack in the same kind of hard hitting message reiteration and musical excellence as previous double A-side single, Oil Powered Machine/Detroit Red. This time it’s the words of US voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer that belts out over the top of the music mix and she sounds pretty good with Fold’s hair trigger guitar rhythm underpinning her.
The two new tracks will be released on limited gatefold CD and digital download on the 4th May 2015, taking the Leeds band’s tally to six single tracks since their formation, all delivered as double A side couplets, building on their early demos and online releases. You can pre-order the tracks through iTunes or on Fold’s Bandcamp section.
The first of the new tracks, Two Past Midnight, is a scything electric guitar rock and roll electronica mash-up with Fannie Lou’s calls for change thumping above it all. The mixing of the music with the speeches is timed to perfection as ever, especially in the bright synth interlude that features a brilliant speech that starts out, “if I hate you because you hate me I’m no better than you are”. The speaker during this middle section is surprisingly Hamer once again, and it’s as inspired as everything else Fold include on their releases.
You can take a listen to Two Past Midnight in the music stream below to make up your own mind, but we’re big fans of what the band has put together so far. It feels like things are building pretty rapidly in the direction of a full studio album and the latest single adds even more weight to the expectation.
The second track, Don’t Kid Yourself Baby, is a little less hard-hitting musically than its flip-side cousin, but it also features the words of the civil rights leader. It extends the sample from the first song, to include some of her more scathing comments, including “with a handful, for a handful, by a handful”, referring to the significant inequality that wracked the United States at the time. It’s accompanied by funk guitar and synth keys that seem to do all that they can to stay out of the speaker’s way.
For anyone not up on their civil rights movement history, the tribute in the single release is to the power of Fannie Lou Hamer’s commanding presence at the head of a podium and her determination to see equality throughout America. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi’s Freedom Summer, which was a campaign in 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. Black people who registered to vote in the South were persecuted severely at that time with institutionalized racism fighting against activists and anyone brave enough to stand up to it. Harassment, job loss, ferocious beatings and murder were regular occurrences, making Fannie Lou’s efforts all the more impressive.
There will probably be a few more songs released in advance of any debut album from Fold, so hopefully we’ll get to listen to more music from them before too long. There’s been murmurings about a studio record since 2013, but this summer will see them making the step up to a full album to accompany all of their single releases.
Fold, Two Past Midnight review: 4/5
