The Great Unwashed - The Great Unwashed EP

Melodic Limited CD Release #2
-The second edition of the Melodic Limited CD Release series
-Hand stamped and numbered on greyboard digipack
-With printed art and fold out zine.
-Limited to 50 copies

Digital EP 
-Digital Download

Salford six-piece The Great Unwashed unveil their self-titled debut EP, arriving as the second instalment in Melodic’s new Limited Release CD series - a deliberately old-school project built around small runs, physical objects and records that simply appear fully formed, ready to hear and buy, rather than disappearing into months of pre-release noise.

The Great Unwashed began, appropriately enough, over a conversation about music. Reuben Munroe (Vocals, Guitar) met George Smith (Guitar) on the first day of Music Technology lectures at Salford University; by that evening, George had introduced him to Josh Seddon (Guitar) and Finn Emery (Keys and Synthesizers) at the Old Pint Pot, a Salford watering hole that quite fittingly, started life as a school. Here a shared fixation with Radiohead, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sigur Rós quickly turned into plans for a band. Jacob Simpson joined on drums, with Harley Priest (Bass) later completing the current six-piece.

What began in the orbit of post-rock has since grown into something far harder to pin down. Across their debut EP, the widescreen influence of Sigur Rós and Godspeed collides with Talk Talk and Storm In Heaven-era Verve, alongside folk, slowcore, Midwest emo and the more unexpected musical backgrounds of the six people making it. Reuben traces his fingerpicked guitar parts back through Nick Drake, Bob Dylan and Sun Kil Moon, while Harley approached the record from an almost opposite direction, bringing ideas drawn from progressive rock and Parliament-style funk into music he was still learning how to categorise.

That collision of perspectives is central to the EP. Songs may begin with one member, but none end there. On ‘In Death’, for example, an eight-bar middle section in Reuben’s original demo expanded dramatically once it reached the rehearsal room, transformed by Josh’s lead guitar and Jacob’s evolving drum part. Elsewhere, ‘I Do Try’, circles memories of childhood, nostalgia and identity. For Harley, ‘Call To The Morning’ had an impact before he even knew what was being sung: “I never needed the context to feel emotionally overwhelmed.” He describes the band’s music, instinctively, as blue and purple.

The result is a cathartic record made less through adherence to a genre than through six people pushing at each other’s ideas. The band describe their aim as creating a “cohesive narrative that captures the listener’s full attention from start to finish”, with arrangements that move patiently between intimacy and scale, restraint and release. “Despite a vast variety of influences, personal hardships and numerous roadblocks along the way, this EP came together through sheer passion and respect for the music we all needed to make,” the band explain. “Our self-titled EP is titled as such because definitively it IS The Great Unwashed.”

The release also continues the Melodic Limited Release CD series: a counterpoint to the abundance and uniformity of modern release cycles. Each edition is treated primarily as a physical release with no pre-order. Music is available on streaming platforms and CD at the same time, with the hand-made limited editions available exclusively direct from the label & the occasional independent record shop. 

The Great Unwashed’s edition (also available at Piccadilly Records) comes as a hand-stamped and individually numbered greyboard digipak, limited to 75 copies with artwork and a fold-out zine by Amelie Boyd. To celebrate its release, the band will play an extended headline set at The Abbey on September 25th.