Whirling Hall Of Knives – ‘Knukke’
Beginning the 9th LP from Whirling Hall Of Knives, Knukke’s title track opens with strands of shifting drum patterns from long-time WHOK collaborator Bryan O’Connell – unsettlingly crude edits and loops of which overlap and weave over ominous cooing and what sounds like a robotic feline in distress. The opening screeching and grinding of Skarper/Apprehe develops into a passage of the most bleak and despairingly gnarled electro, which in turn gets swallowed by yet another amorphous and distorted migraine. Sumer Love is a more bliss-ridden meditation – a brief respite from the chaos that has passed and a welcome pause before the total collapse to come. Celestial vocal washes struggle to break out from behind an arid rhythmic throb. Side B brings the side-long Single-Use Earth – the first half of which erupts into a bleak, monotonous, extended cacophony that eventually gives way to some fluttering, time-stretched memories, bobbing on a series of polluted waves lapping against the radioactive shore. Limited edition of 100.
Modern Technology – ‘Modern Technology EP’
Introducing the self-released debut EP of East London two-piece Modern Technology. Modern Technology formed through a shared frustration of a post-truth society and political unrest that is currently suffocating our global conscious. Chris Clarke (bass & vocals) and Owen Gildersleeve (drums) confront these issues head-on, tackling themes of political injustice, social anxiety, austerity and inequality. All profits from the release will be shared between housing and homelessness charity Shelter and mental-health charity Mind. Limited edition of 50.
KIndred Spirits presents – ‘Various Patients Hearing Voices’
‘Various Patients Hearing Voices’ features a disturbing collection of recordings exploring the destabilising phenomena referred to by medicine as auditory hallucination. Often cited as affecting those suffering from some form of mental disorder, notably schizophrenia, research in recent years has unearthed scientific evidence that hearing voices also afflicts both children and healthy people. Seven such research studies are gathered for further investigation on this rather disturbing set, the collection put together by Aetheric head honcho Alistair Thaw, here working under his more macabre alter ego, Kindred Spirits. Set to a chilling and minimalist drone whirr, think of a remotely detuned and alien sounding Radiophonic Workshop score, which in truth serves to edge up both the tension and the primitivism, ‘various patients hearing voices’ shines a very shadowy light on the arcane, almost medieval treatment of these ‘patients’, the recounting tales creep with twisted and disturbed fascination, their insular freeze wayward and hatched from a ice haunted clinical crude that loosely touches base with early Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and the Mount Vernon Arts Lab. (Mark Barton, The Sunday Experience). Limited edition of 40.