The Wildhouse are one of those bands which have acquired a kind of mythical status - like fellow Dundonians Gerils, tales of legendary live shows and the odd recording have somehow snuck out without the band ever really taking their place on the gigging circuit, or putting anything that you could really call a ‘release’ in umpteen years. Now, however, thanks to modern technology, their two albums Hyenas and Poet:Saint - from more than 20 years ago - have become available.

So, two decades on, the band sound curiously modern, even if they’re caught out of time - ‘Doug and Billy’ has that C86 strumminess with some Wedding Present jangle into the bargain but at the same time it spans another couple of decades - with the basic, rhythmic percussion, you can almost hear that the drummer’s standing up.

Taking those extremes and running with them, ‘All Encompassing Positive’ is kind of a precusor to Glasvegas, in that it has a feel - temporarily - of 1967 Velvet Underground before bursting into a triple speed, feedback-fest, and then lurching back to comparative clarity, while the threat of further sonic assault remains, guitars sweeping past like traffic.
‘Preflyte’ likewise squalls with feedback, but takes on a head-nodding Krautrock-y groove punctuated by jagged cymbals and meandering freeform guitar, while ‘Miro’ is somewhere between 17 Seconds (ha!)-era Cure and Swervedriver, all swathed in distortion and bursts of radio static, as if recorded off the Peel show on medium wave. ‘Ficca’ continues this lo-fi feel, a clacking drum machine propelling a far-away guitar and the slightest hint of brooding malevolence as the singer darkly intones “This is over my head, this is outwith my reach”. It’s been a long time coming, but The Wildhouse have finally arrived.

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