Practical Dancing (for the Modern Man)

It has been stated that the dance is an art which mirrors life itself, from fluid movements in nature such as sub-atomic cymatic gyrations, Brownian movements of pollen, the eddied wind among the trees and rolling waves beating on the shore.

Likewise for humans the dance ritual reflects a philosophical perspective of interconnectedness and reciprocity between humans and the natural world, that interconnectedness was non more realised than on the recording of ‘Practical Dancing (For the Modern Man)’ which was conceived in full immersion of the elements - in a hand made wooden studio, surrounded by trees, on a windy hill in Coolyduff, rural Cork, Ireland.

Dance, utilised by generational stories across time, in some culture for the exorcising of painful memory of oppression - it’s movement transcends the limits of chronological time and its traumatizing, disease-causing effects and as Phil Langero himself stated “the album is an antidote to our post covid digital division times - an unflashy spiritual dance in us all, from primal to modern times, so necessary as to be practical” – his ‘Practical Dancing (For the Modern Man)’ is a dance ritual rhythm that follows the beat of the human heart - music made to soundtrack the primal dance that rejects digital and social fragmentation.

Phil Langero has always embraced a very fruitful Irish scene, his own history is intertwined with urban hillbilly goat punk’s ‘Los Langeros’, shrouded in the dank mouldy walls of its own dungeon - improv band ‘Damp Howl’ & the heavily plumed paens to puce of ‘Hawk Bastard’, the latter formed after an encounter at ‘Hunters Moon Festival’ in Leitrim with “spectral beauties GNOD” (as Phil described). It was here he was drawn into a weirder musical orbit, manifesting in his collaboration with GNOD’s Paddy Shine on the Spectral Acid Folk of ‘Moundabout’.

‘Practical Dancing (For the Modern Man)’ is Tom Wait’s entering a culturally arid ragged industrial dub noise world, playing out as a twisted dirty hypnotic rural dance that summon spirits of the gods to cleanse the earth with rain (rain being a symbol of forgiveness in some native cultures).

Like a dank and swampy Sun Araw playing in the multilayered animated toy box of CAN’s 2nd vinyl from their Tago Mago double, Phil Langero creates a whirling maelstrom that empowers and gives agency, both deconstructing and reconstructing.

‘Practical Dancing (For the Modern Man)’ is piercing plea for a path through life’s labyrinth off nausea, a panacea to anything slick or cynical, like asking the approval of the spirits to ensured that society’s ‘cultural’ agronomy will sustain healthy nourishment here after.

With rain’s symbol of forgiveness, this is a drenched dance for a culture that needs to be cleansed.