Hard Times Furious Dancing is the fourth studio album by secretive forest dwellers Snapped Ankles – it follows 2021’s Forest Of Your Problems (Rough Trade Shops Album of the Month). Forest Of Your Problems peaked at a tantalising #41 in the official UK album chart (#2 in the indie chart and #5 in the physical chart). It was album of the day on BBC 6 Music and album of the week at Brooklyn Vegan and Amazing Radio. End of year honours included The Quietus, Rough Trade, Piccadilly and Jumbo Records. The album is available to retail on CD, black vinyl and as a limited edition indies only version on ‘Don Quixote’s Green’ vinyl – it’s quite green, but those windmills weren’t quite giants either .[there will also be exclusive Dinked and Bandcamp variants available] Vinyl versions feature spot varnished covers + printed inners with incredible artwork and photography by Louise Mason. Lead single ‘Raoul’ is accompanied by a surrealist video by Gil Anselmi & Jack Foster. The word of the forest continues to spread, with the previous album taking them on two North American tours and festivals as far afield as South East Asia and a headline show at Camden’s iconic Roundhouse. Snapped Ankles embark on their biggest tour to date, with a run of over thirty shows in the UK and Europe this spring, including a night at Fabric in London on May 15. We can still hold the line of beauty, form, and beat. No small accomplishment in a world as challenging as this one… hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof” Alice Walker, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (2010) Snapped Ankles have given up trying to make sense of it all. The forest only offers so much protection. Feeding on a diet of fractured narratives, meme culture, viral moments and the very worst of human impulses weighs heavy. The woodwose hold up a mirror to the absurdity of modern life once again. The only sane response is to dance. Make your way to the clearing, gather around the megalith of speakers, drum machines, amps and synthesisers and dance like there’s no tomorrow. Hard Times Furious Dancing is an invitation to all those lost in the unrelenting noise of the present, to leave it all behind and come together in the forest. Driven by the primitive thrust of their single-oscillator ‘log’ synths, high and low culture collide in a surreal, free flowing narrative – but the rhythm is universal. This is easily the closest Snapped Ankles have come to capturing their rapturous live energy in the studio. It’s everything you’ve come to know and love from a Snapped Ankles album, amped all the way up until the ground begins to shake. The sound of Hard Times Furious Dancing evolved at Snapped Ankles’ South London ‘Forest Rayve’ club nights in 2024 in response to that age-old primal urge to bring people together and make them move. It’s the first time the woodwose have road tested new material to this extent before committing it to tape since debut album Come Play The Trees, and in doing so have harnessed that feral energy once again. This surreal human/woodwose connection is the very best release from an algorithm that knows you better than you know yourself. Dance it all loose. CD: LP: 1. A1. Pay the Rent 2. A2. Personal Responsibilities 3. A3. Raoul 4. A4. Dancing In Transit 5. B1. Where’s the Caganer? 6. B2. Smart World 7. B3. Hagen Im Garten 8. B4. ?? Bai Lan 9. B5. Closely Observed on Forest Of Your Problems: “Forest of Your Problems takes in Krautrock, tribal rhythms, post-punk – but it winds up sounding almost nothing like anyone else” – The Guardian. “Snapped Ankles scope has expanded, resulting in this riotous takedown of eco-hypocrisy and corporate greenwashing to the accompaniment of rhythms so wildly exuberant they could rearrange loins” – 4/5, Mojo “The kind of hyperactive, motorik bangers that can send audiences into hysterics” – Album of the Week, Brooklyn Vegan “A Goat-meet-The-Fall sound world that perfectly captures the group’s psychotic, eerie vision of the Anthropocene” – 8/10, Loud & Quiet on Snapped Ankles: “Snapped Ankles are but a celebration of the necessity of the weird” – the Quietus “So good! Absolute heroes” – Lauren Laverne, BBC 6 Music
