The Foundling Wheel builds noise-saturated mountains of programmed polyrhythms and bitcrushed distortion. A solo act, his brutally overdriven guitars, loops, and samples twist and career between twitchy introspection and a “wail of screeching banshee sonics.” Pretty collides with ugly and melodies shatter into shimmering pieces. Mixing the fractured experimentalism of Xiu Xiu, the machine-gunning intensity of Big Black, and the devastated romanticism of Joy Division, The Foundling Wheel creates a post-industrial art-punk that places him among Edinburgh’s finest underground racketeers.
The Foundling Wheel started in 2007 and has shared the stage with Pivot, So So Modern, Zombie Zombie, Drum Eyes, Felix Kubin, and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and is part of the Bear Scotland collective with Meursault, DeadBoyRobotics, Withered Hand, and Enfant Bastard. His eponymous debut album was released in 2008. The single “Noises Like Ashes” was released on 10 July 2009.
“It’s beepy, it’s insane, it’s shouty. It’s angry but clever. It makes me want to drive a motorcycle the wrong way down the motorway. Naked.”- Milo McLaughlin, I Hear A New World, The Skinny
“braiding chromatic sheets of singeing electro-bending between frayed laces of gleaming melody.” - Billy Hamilton, The Skinny
“brilliant electronic madness” - Euan, TheSteinbergPrinciple
“Like a cracked toy from the 80’s being played to death with a hybrid of Ian Curtis & Mark E Smith fronting, TFW are as exciting as they are innovative!” - Subba-Cultcha
“Experimental mental music for robots to have sex to” - Gamma Ray, HOBO
“I felt like I was watching a car crash stretched out over a full half hour, in an entirely J G Ballard kind of way.” -Nick Trepka
Hey Ted,
Congratulations! It sounds like the Foundling Wheel is doing well…new release and loved the interview in The Skinny. “subtlety of a torpedo to the anus”…gotta like that write up.
We were just listening to some of your stuff on MySpace. I found myself doing a little toe tapping…can’t wait to see a performance.
Didn’t see The foundling Wheel on Facebook?
Hope you guys are doing well. We’ve been day dreaming about coming back to the UK in the Spring.