This is an amazing slice of consistency, electronica with a strong folksy core, absorbs the projects raw materials like soft soil does a boulder suitably covered in a thick coating of mossy down…
Him (loving those enigmatic single word titles) starts proceedings recounting a tale of domestic abuse to haunting slips of drone…‘He beat her black, he beat her blue, he made the bourbons(?) rattle too ’ There’s a quiet authority to the voice, a game keeper spinning a yarn in front of a blazing hearth. You can really feel the scenery contracting to this voice as the distant clanging and sulphurous swirls fill the speakers in differences, dissidence… Sounds that conjure / romance some ‘other’, a sepia soak that’s excellently observed, right down to the boozy chants dissipating in frosty air. An ooze of late Autumn, like a trace of weathered initials in time bloated bark or the fragrance of some mouldering almanac …
Dusted in glints of IDM modernism Us briefly removes you... in a strange mechanical ping/pong, attacked in hissy vents and modulated cross cuts , like the bell jarred excitement of insects bouncing the curvature of glass before succumbing to a lethal chemical cocktail.
Them radiates on heavier densities, the crackle of radioactive topes… a weighty drone fed with ominous breaths and creaking phantoms… a tensile rumble worked over by some gorgeous gossamer fretwork, whilst a knot of tattered rosary threads skip the core...
The last track Her suckles from the previous... its scratchy seismic needles linger as the narrator returns on an undulating odour of drone and breeze flapping lace … ‘Go from my window my love, go from my window please’ he sings repeatedly in a vain attempt to banish a persistent apparition maybe? as the marrow of rotting leaves fills the air in a subtle churn of worming metallics
A brilliantly realised EP that makes me eager to sample more from Mr Norton’s cabinet of curiosities…
Comments
Best wishes
kemper