Words by the ever erudite Adam Turner.

Yakuza was written for Warmduscher’s 2024 album Too Cold To Hold, but the group felt it didn’t fit with that album’s sound, and so held it over for a release of its own. A rollicking, beefed up song with Spaghetti Western string bending and bursts of gunfire, the track also boasts a chanted title and spoken word sections. It’s like stumbling into a cinema after the film has begin and not being sure what’s going on, the action already well under way.

The single comes with two remixes, one from Sworn Virgins, who submit, surrender a sleazy, electro-punk bump & grind. All whipcrack crashes and industrial throbbing. Belgian basement music. The other, courtesy of David Holmes, is an ‘everything louder than everything else’, needles- in- the- red take. Synths buzzing like a swarm of bees, the vocals sunk deep into the noise and sirens going off. It’s a thrilling piece of music, electrified and alive. Just like the other Warmduscher adjacent outfits – Paranoid London and Decius – it doesn’t deal in subtlety. It grabs you by the lapels and gives you bloody good shake. Insisting you wake up and listen.

Warmduscher’s Yazuka is out now on Peter Doherty’s Strap Originals.

You can find more pukka prose from Adam Turner over at his own brilliant blog, The Bagging Area.