Asylums' LUKE BRANCH RELEASES DEBUT SOLO SINGLE “GUTTERMOUTH” - OUT NOW
LUKE BRANCH
RELEASES DEBUT SOLO SINGLE
“GUTTERMOUTH” - OUT NOW
Obtuse Records via Cool Thing Records
Who's the guttermouth? Take your pick. The man in the Oval Office. The media machine feeding him the mic. Or just the voice in your own head at 3am, the one that never has anything nice to say. Luke Branch isn't telling you which. That's the point.
Best known as the frontman and songwriter of Asylums - and, more recently, as co-composer of the score to this summer's hit US film 40 Dates and 40 Nights, starring Bailee Madison and Joel Courtney - Branch has spent the last two years doing something he's never done before: making an entire body of work on his own terms, entirely by himself. Every instrument. Every voice. Every word.
The first track to come from these sessions is “Guttermouth”, which received its global premiere on X-posure with John Kennedy on Radio X this past weekend. John called the track “fantastic” and made it his Hot One on the show.
It was recorded in solitary sessions at SS2 Recording in Southend-on-Sea with longtime friend, recording engineer and collaborator Rees Broomfield, then mixed by Dave Eringa (Manic Street Preachers, Wilko Johnson). Even the cover art - an oil painting, manipulated in Photoshop - is Branch's own work. DIY was always the backbone of Asylums and Cool Thing; here, it's taken to its logical extreme - one man, no committee, doing it all himself.
Squeezed into the gaps around a heavy workload running Cool Thing, scoring films, alongside being a committed father, this is a record made in stolen hours - which might be exactly why it sounds like it does: urgent, unfiltered, nobody looking over his shoulder.
It's a different animal to Asylums, but make no mistake - the same DNA is in there. This track is taken from a much larger body of work, and it's coming via a new home: Obtuse Records, a subsidiary of Cool Thing set up to house Branch's solo work, spoken word, visual art, and soundtrack projects.
Branch on the record: "I'm sure the world didn't need a Luke Branch solo release, but I needed it. After years of making albums and touring, I wanted to be a student again, to take time out to learn, improve and experiment. This music was created in contrast to the film soundtrack work I was also doing at the time."
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ABOUT LUKE BRANCH
Luke Branch is the founder and frontman of Asylums - a much-loved cult act who worked with the likes of Steve Albini and Dave Eringa, releasing four critically acclaimed studio albums: Killer Brain Waves (2016), Alien Human Emotions (2018), Genetic Cabaret (2020), and Signs of Life (2022). The band are currently on a recording and touring hiatus.
Luke co-scored this summer's feature film 40 Dates and 40 Nights (2026), Crossroads (2025), both directed by Andrew Delaney and co-runs the independent music company Cool Thing Music.
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