Duke Garwood - Satin Warrior (God Unknown)

The Slow Music Movement
May 30
2 min read

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's May 26th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

The cover for Duke Garwood's Satin Warrior LP, which shows an abstract painting of a brown wild cat snarling at a swirling orange flame. The blue background adds intensity to the dynamic scene.

Duke Garwood is a serious multi-instrumentalist who’s been around. It also appears he’s been hiding in plain sight from me having played clarinet and guitar with acts like The Orb, Morcheeba and Mark Lanegan, as well as a host of notable bands across a range of genres, not to mention releasing six albums of his own.

A silhouetted picture of Duke Garwood in dramatic black-and-white lighting, creating a mysterious mood. Blurred abstract background, no text visible.

Details of his new album are sparse to say the least - whatever happened to release notes, but I believe that the new LP is a further collaboration with Paul May, principle percussionist with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and improvisor about town.

I’m also guessing, as both musicians are the live and direct types, that at least the drums and guitar/bass were recorded live, but there’s a whole lot more than that to explore, so I assume multi-tracking was the order of the day? The boys certainly nailed the underpinning grooves throughout, and across a range of tempos too, honestly if I was starting a band these two might well be my rhythm section of choice.

The album title track launches the LP with a bang and an insistent groove, with Garwood’s one man jazz funk horn section, haunting guitar atmospherics and spoken words conjuring a swampy, noirish jazz blues vibe, something of a recurring theme. More jazz licked, bluesy spoken word follows, before “Satin Brad’s” spiritual jazz meditation provides a gentler bed for more worldly wise/weary musings from Garwood. “Tangerine Warrior” ups the funk, “Divine Suit” gives his vocal cords a break and increases the lysergic quality with some fuzzed out but not too freaky guitar. “Drifting Warrior” is a lonesome cowboy blues and the LP opener, “Scarlett Trees“ sounds like it was recorded at 4am after May had collapsed or gone home and Garwood was picking up instruments at random to keep his thoughts company.

Now I’m off to explore his back catalogue, it appears I’ve got some catching up to do.