Post-rock supergroup ahoy!

Causing moody, spoddy types to get very excited, Crippled Black Phoenix includes Mogwai bassist Dominic Aitchison, Portishead's Geoff Barrow and drummer Justin Greaves of Electric Wizard, the latter sparking the project when he started recording songs and soundscapes in 2004.

Together the old friends realised visions which had been pestering Greaves for years, and on April 30 they will release their debut album, A Love Of Shared Disasters. It is the first of an intended trilogy of endtime ballads about "love, loss, tragedy and redemption"

which often take dark tales from the depths of literary history as their inspiration.

The Northern Cobbler, for instance, which you can hear on the band's MySpace site, has Alfred Tennyson's ballad of the same name being read in old Lincolnshire dialect.