Episod 298 and Episode 299 - Excavation by The Haxan Cloak (Sides A and B)

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Diving deep into the discography of R.E.M. rapidly turned into a sorta of existential torture, particularly as we got towards the end of their career. So what did we decide to follow it up with? A journey into what existential despair may ACTUALLY sound like with The Haxan Cloak.

Under the guise of The Haxah Cloak, Bobby Krilc has only released two albums, three EPs and, more recently, a single. In this episode we take a brief look at the first, self titled, Haxan Cloak record and those EPs, before turning our attention to Bobby's soundtrack work. A fair more eclectic and overall less abyssal oeuvre. In part one we cover a selection of his output up until the soundtrack of the (frankly stunning) game Returnal.

We wrap up this week’s dual episodes on The Haxan Cloak with Mark going deep into the Returnal soundtrack, doing a quick drive-by on the Beef soundtrack, touching on a couple of other movie scores, before taking Excavation on in its entirety. 

Due to the hype around Excavation when it came out, we go on quite the tangent about PR in music. We discuss how there seemed to be very little in the way of critical feedback on this album, and in doing so we explore whether or not this album actually has a narrative at all, or if the narrative simply exists because it was created by the press to give the media something to hang its hat on when talking about the album. We're not saying we start to question the meaning of music, but we do get damn close to it.