Best New Music: Mullet Conspiracy – Das Mullet Cycle

Whatever ever happened to Mullet Conspiracy? The faux-German five piece’s 2001 debut, Nietzsche Is My Homeboy, was an odyssey of neo krautrock existentialism and Aryan prog soundscapes. Thom Yorke even proclaimed it the ‘best philosophy/prog album ever’, allegedly. Over the ensuing decade, enigmatic frontman Kaiser Wilhelm’s continuing problem with substance abuse have been well documented, and most of us thought it was auf wiedersehen for the Swansea wunderkinds (the less said about, lead guitarist, Umlaut’s solo attempts the better).

But with Das Mullet Cycle the, allegedly clean, ladyboys are back with a giddying display of artist pretension: a quadruple LP loosely inspired by Richard Wagner’s Teutonic uber-opera, Der Ring des Nibelungen. The first question to ask is ‘how?’ quickly followed by ‘why?’ These petty debates are soon banished as you immerse yourself into this masterpiece of polemic fantasy, and it soon becomes a whole load of ‘fuck yeah!’ Think R-Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet, but made by Sigur Ros.

Following the adventures of our transvestite hero, Frau Mullet, Das Mullet Cycle is a parabolic anti-autobiography of Wilhelm’s undiagnosed schizophrenia and gender displacement issues, rising to a deafening, discordant crescendo four-hours in with ‘Suck this Siegfried Freud, I’m a Valkyrie Now!’ and its extended saxoflute solo.

I demand a Glastonbury headline slot. I can see the valkryies over Pilton now.

Reviewed by Amadeus Hump