A 78' grain, crinkle puckered in birdie recoil…a harpist smothered in dust and zither string zig zag …Ghostly utterances and murmers haunting the space …these two discs are seriously antiqued... the sound clogged in cobwebs and insect husks reflecting the scratched nature of the F.W. Murnau silent movie it was soundtracking…
The grooves are slipping like wet tongues in dry mouths, sucking operatic scales backwards, fingerings of chamber music fringed in Miss Havisham’s rotting lace … half submerged snippets of classical / 20’s music hall, sounding like an overtly sinister episode of Bagpus … giving out Shining vibes… glassy flashes of Jack reflected in the eyes of barkeep Lloyd… goosebumps a plenty...
The disconcerting headphone canters are brilliant… darting between left and right channels… climbing in volume, toying with your psyche, details continually spiking the foreground…giving out those falling awake heebyjeebies… the drift, a deliciously tattered, raggedy disembodiment …suspended in smeary sustain…, The gramophone crackling like rain, sizzling fat, a tattooists needle scrawling purgatories across milky skin… guitar picked phrases leaking through garbled curses… If you listen too closely you might even hear a few long dead relatives.
Without losing any of the accrued mood, the end of the second disc features two early demos of tracks fully realised on The Surveillance Lounge album. These are a bit lowercase n sketchy as you'd expect, practically skeletons of the final product, a disc that is up there along with the eerie rivers of Sugar Fish Drink or the mental wonk of Homotopy to Marie.
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