тпсб—Whities 031

тпсб provide Whities’ swansong with this three-track EP. The label will rename to AD 93 from their next release onwards, shedding an identity which had become cumbersome under the yoke of recently-transformed conversations and social attitudes. A kind of musical ecdysis, Whities 031 doesn’t disappoint—it’s as transitional and transformative for тпсб as it is for AD 93. Those familiar with тпсб’s Sekundenschlaf will have been anticipating Whities 031 eagerly. The happy surprise is that it spits in the face of these expectations to carve an entirely new path.

Sekundenschlaf felt like unattributed, authorless tracks recovered from an Eastern European tar pit. The album was dark, mysterious, sludgy and partially-decayed; the jungle equivalent of a snuff film. тпсб’s full-length Blackest Ever Black release was a microcosm of that label’s whole vibe.

Since Blackest Ever Black’s death, тпсб have burst from their cocoon with a far brighter collection of tracks. There’s still an endemic spookiness, but drums are crisp and luminous; treble-heavy and loaded with feather-light snares. The EP has a clean, spacious mix. It's the polar opposite to the “through-next-door’s-wall” muddiness of Sekundenschlaf. We’re hearing the same beast, using one of its other heads; as vigorous and inventive but with a rejigged vocabulary. It’s neat that тпсб’s two releases come from labels whose names contrast each other so absolutely, in what feels like a case of art imitating life.

Whities 031, in some sense, feels like a descendant of Orbital’s In Sides or Matthew Herbert’s Bodily Functions. Its sound is not only organic but interior. The EP has a peculiar wetness. In its delays, and echoes which pan from left to right, 031 sounds like blood flowing through ears. The cellular chatter that livens veins. It provokes a journey within oneself, inspecting the mechanical status of the human body; oscillating and oily.

‘If This Is I Don’t Know What Isn’t’ is the apex of this exploration, wisely situated slap-bang in the EP’s centre. The track breathes a soft fluidity into its own very angular and geometric landscape—it’s both the dock and the waves. Burial infamously sampled bullet casings and excerpts of the soundtrack of Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid 2 on Untrue. тпсб here suggest that game’s setting, the Big Shell, with a quasi-ambient industrial beat that’s sure to remind many listeners of happy hours spend slipping on bird shit and soaking up the pale PS2 sun.

The nostalgia doesn’t end there, though, courtesy of тпсб’s confrontational old-schoolism. This was present on their last release, too. But where Sekundenschlaf felt like an exercise in nostalgia—an almost sardonic resurrection of long-dead aesthetics—Whities 031 is a joyous remixing of the glory days of jungle and footwork.

Whities 031 is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Quirke — Steal a Golden Hail

The flush of synth strings which opens Quirke's Steal a Golden Hail is so arid it’s cracking to pieces. Sat at the beginning of opening track 'Luxury Red Pence', it’s the first of many nasty flourishes which grant the album such unique character. Bright to the point of blinding, Quirke’s sound recalls everything and nothing at once. It’s as if the snowy blizzards of Skee Mask’s Compro were replaced by nuclear ash. The warped corpses of rave classics, barely distinguishable behind a near-opaque wall of distortion and decay.

‘Se Seven 7S’ adds momentum to Golden Hail with a solid beat — though that, too, soon falls into stuttered, but controlled, confusion. The track has an intentional sag in the middle, tumbling wilful listeners into a second-act sinkhole that’s seductively chaotic. It sets a trend for the rest of the album, too; a long but justified runtime, buoyed on the back of a trance-inducing timbre.

‘Sample Devon’ is a little more scrutable; a shameless throwback driven by intense breaks and slow, beautiful chord progressions. It comes off like a jungle remix of Bobby Krlic’s ‘Attestupan’; a continuation of Quirke’s ‘too-bright’ sound in how it recollects the score to a horror film staged at blinding midday. Like Krlic’s composition, it is inert but hypnotic.

Golden Hail has a generally eerier second half, with ‘Xultext Cradle’ an alien transmission that carves an open space through the album’s centre. It is an expansive cavity that fills itself with sonic texture. And, while more terrestrial in its approach, ‘Maybe Again, Crawl Through’ unsettles as well. It’s a pretty but unexperimental wander into wafty ambient territory, disconcerting for its jarring placement in the album’s tracklist.

Quirke saves the best for last with ‘Spinhaunt Coil’. The entire salvo of Steal a Golden Hail is held in balance. It’s a track somehow hard and gentle, brutish and playful. It’s a perfect capstone to the material it follows, doing the impossible and distilling this album’s many qualities into one concise package.

Steal a Golden Hail is available to purchase and stream here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

smog — sequel'70

A minute or two of peace ushers in smog's sequel'70. There's a menacing intake of breath, followed by a harmonic hum. But the quiet doesn't last long. Once this album kicks off, it doesn't let go. It's ludicrously hard, with bass powerful enough to smash every window on the street.

Gabber and noise cosy up to surprising success, as sine waves and blasts of static punctuate the beats enclosing them. These grace notes allow repetition without monotony — crucial, when most of your tracks approach six minutes.

'Dazzle' and 'Abschluss SCAN' both monsters, marrying classic fuck-off breaks and handclaps with futuristic groaning and squealing. But they're also two tracks which begin to drag before they're over. They find their rut and they stick in it, pounding away relentlessly until they're spent.

Even if these tracks could be said to outstay their welcome on a home listen, though, dropped into a set they would soar. And that's clearly what they've been made for. Smog wisely bookends them with 'Straightforward' and the album's outro, too. Both bring some variety. 'Straightforward' feels like a field recording; the slaps of a boat on a dock.

This tactility is something all sequel'70's tracks share; quasi-organic surfaces sliding and scraping on each other, interacting, forming and breaking apart. It's at once rooted in the physical world, and off somewhere else completely. Sequel'70 is a hammering and invigorating experience.

sequel’70 is available to purchase and stream here. smog’s label and associated artists, okqo, can be found here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe