Hard Times Furious Dancing

Description

Hard Times Furious Dancing is the fourth studio album by secretive forest dwellers Snapped Ankles it follows 2021s Forest Of Your Problems (Rough Trade Shops Album of the Month).

Forest Of Your Problems peaked at a tantalising #41 in the official UK album chart (#2 in the indie chart and #5 in the physical chart).

It was album of the day on BBC 6 Music and album of the week at Brooklyn Vegan and Amazing Radio.

End of year honours included The Quietus, Rough Trade, Piccadilly and Jumbo Records.

The album is available to retail on black vinyl and as a limited edition indies only version on Don Quixotes Green vinyl its quite green, but those windmills werent quite giants either.

Vinyl versions feature spot varnished covers + printed inners with incredible artwork and photography by Louise Mason.

Lead single Raoul is accompanied by a surrealist video by Gil Anselmi & Jack Foster.

The word of the forest continues to spread, with the previous album taking them on two North American tours and festivals as far afield as South East Asia and a headline show at Camdens iconic Roundhouse.

Snapped Ankles embark on their biggest tour to date, with a run of over thirty shows in the UK and Europe this spring, including a night at Fabric in London on May 15.

We can still hold the line of beauty, form, and beat. No small accomplishment in a world as challenging as this one hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof Alice Walker, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (2010)

Snapped Ankles have given up trying to make sense of it all. The forest only offers so much protection. Feeding on a diet of fractured narratives, meme culture, viral moments and the very worst of human impulses weighs heavy. The woodwose hold up a mirror to the absurdity of modern life once again. The only sane response is to dance. Make your way to the clearing, gather around the megalith of speakers, drum machines, amps and synthesisers and dance like theres no tomorrow.

Hard Times Furious Dancing is an invitation to all those lost in the unrelenting noise of the present, to leave it all behind and come together in the forest. Driven by the primitive thrust of their single-oscillator log synths, high and low culture collide in a surreal, free flowing narrative but the rhythm is universal. This is easily the closest Snapped Ankles have come to capturing their rapturous live energy in the studio. Its everything youve come to know and love from a Snapped Ankles album, amped all the way up until the ground begins to shake.

The sound of Hard Times Furious Dancing evolved at Snapped Ankles South London Forest Rayve club nights in 2024 in response to that age-old primal urge to bring people together and make them move. Its the first time the woodwose have road tested new material to this extent before committing it to tape since debut album Come Play The Trees, and in doing so have harnessed that feral energy once again. This surreal human/woodwose connection is the very best release from an algorithm that knows you better than you know yourself. Dance it all loose.