After releasing an album with Australian label Beats Of No Nation, Brisbane-based trio Das Druid have now signed with London’s Rhythm Section International. Their new EP contains 3 tracks, each accompanied by a remix. 

The original numbers owe a debt to the sound of 1990s Manchester. The Stone Roses in particular. Indie-rock where psychedelic lyrics and paisley guitar licks ride funky breakbeats. Bass-lines are groovy, the syncopation shuffling. Fretwork duets with electronics. Johnny Marr jangle in synergy with acid house. The angelic, choirboy, lullaby vocals, somewhere between The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess and The Roses’ Ian Brown. Fools Gold with flashes of the New FADs. This is all done knowingly, since The Druids themselves describe their music as “Madchester out of Meanjin”.

The remixes keep up the Mancunian connection. Local lad Ruf Dug adds a robotic rhythm to Incense. Swapping the OG’s brushed snares for a mechanical military tattoo. Looping the line “lay your hands on me” over an ALFOS chug, an old school Sabresonic march, that builds in dark, druggy intensity.  

Justin Robertson, who cut his DJ teeth rocking dance floors “up North”, dons his Five Green Moons guise for 2 versions of Freedom. Both vocal and dub are tumbling, rumbling bass-heavy business. The bottom-end worthy of Jah Wobble. Snake-charming tremolo sequences and the rasp of ancient reeds summoning shadowy, hookah smoke clouded corners of Burroughs and Gysin’s Marrakech. Hypnotic, hallucinatory, percussive rituals, that invade the heart and the head. 

DJ Subaru then transforms Less Than 3 with a banging 4 / 4 and a bubbling TB-303. The vibe, loved-up, very ACR “on one”. Double double Good Together. 

Das Druid’s Das EP can be ordered directly from Rhythm Section International.