astroskeleton — The Lives of Perfect Creatures

The cover of The Lives of Perfect Creatures and its first jagged bars are quite deceptive. We meet animal eyes in the goofy, almost meme-like image of two grinning dogs. We hear sounds which recall the buoyancy of Public Service Broadcasting's The Race for Space.

But this is no chest-thumping celebration of mankind's stretches into outer space. Nor is it arch or cutesy, Lassie in album form. This EP's sole aim is to condemn our exploitation of test animals like Chernushka, Laika and Gordo. How, in our single-mindedness, we sent innocent beings to their death.

Wisely, the album refuses to put words in these animals' mouths, instead asking them questions. We don't get, 'you had no idea what you were getting in to'. We get 'did you ever comprehend?' A small but important distinction. To appreciate a dog's mind as unreachable is to display it respect. That's not to say astroskeleton shirks the issue at hand. He asks if dogs yelped as they burned in re-entry. Pain, after all, is a universal instinct.

Plenty of screaming guitar work ensures enough high-frequency action to interest curious pets. And in 'connect the dots', it's like the music itself is mimicking a howl. These flourishes dispel fears the album relies too heavily on lyricism over musicality.

A concise, conceptual blast of post-punk which soars as high as its subjects.

Listeners seeking bold new horizons should explore The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The Lives of Perfect Creatures is available for stream and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Benjamin Finger, James Plotkin & Mia Zabelka — Pleasure-Voltage

A shiver of violin rattles the first breath Pleasure-Voltage takes. Drones bob this giggle of strings from below in an unsettling tide. Disjuncture and chaos is audible from the outset.

This kind of chaos can, in the wrong hands, derail a full-length release. Ideas tire and halt in their own destructive paths. Patience is tested. But Benjamin Finger, James Plotkin and Mia Zabelka have here ensured a consistent, considered LP. The disharmony between players, as in any good collaboration, absolutely invigorates their piece.

Their singular approaches entwine into one cavernous soundscape. It is as though each musician has been given free range within their set frequencies. The sound is, as a result, lush and full. Outside of guitar maestro Fennesz, it's rare to hear so few people sound this vast. The image of an orchestra materialises, despite this music sounding nothing like one.

So what does it sound like? Pleasure-Voltage is nigh-impossible to pin down, speaking in a language of contradictions.

There is an impalpable Baltic quality to it -- albeit with a 'Dead Flag Blues' twist of Americana. Resemblance to Edward Artemiev's scores for Tarkovsky must bear partial responsibility. Both works float in a liminal space; between knowing and unknowing. Familiar sounds and organic instrumentation struggle for dominance, battling synthesis; industrial, atonal abstraction.

Similar techniques mark Leyland Kirby's tremendous ongoing series, Everywhere at the end of time. Musical ideas and short phrases are introduced, then seconds later obliterated. You scrabble for what's underneath, below the layers of disorder. Snatches of speech and melody tease the ears. More so than a composition, Pleasure-Voltage sounds like the disassembly of a piece.

But where Kirby's work (intentionally) stretches time to an agonising length, Pleasure-Voltage compresses it. Later stages of Everywhere at the end of time feel purgatorial. Pleasure-Voltage is a short wave of panic; a coming-on and a going. It rockets to life, becomes all-consuming, then, delicate as a moth, it disappears.

The album's careful structure enhances this sensation. Chaotic when close-read, but take a step back. The structural rigour of a more 'ordered' LP reveals itself as Pleasure-Voltage's glue. And this is what prevents chaos becoming tiresome: care. Care buoys every individual second of this piece -- and blankets the whole, too. A wonderful listening experience.

Fans may enjoy Fennesz, Grouper, Edward Artemiev and The Caretaker. Pleasure-Voltage is available for streaming and purchase here.

Maria Fusco — ECZEMA!

Maria Fusco’s ECZEMA! is confrontational and forthright. The first thing we hear is a man's voice, bathed in lush reverb. It sounds like the inter-hymn mumblings of an episode of Songs of Praise. We're transported into a cavernous cathedral; nudged into an involuntary live experience.

Fusco's decision to hand her words over to a male performer is mysterious — but her words are anything but. Over a half hour of captivating music she bares herself completely. It may seem a flippant subject, but Fusco ensures a comprehensive and deadly serious exploration of eczema here.

Music is so often permitted to explore the travails of mental health but, short of outliers like Ian Dury and the Blockheads, not its physical side. Here Fusco blends the two areas with skill. Itching is framed as a compulsive, even erotic act. Our performer describes the urge to 'rasp the tender places'. It's transgressive, private, and 'ravishing'.

But the physical cost is made clear too - Fusco paints herself as a grotesque Frankenstein's monster. Hard, drifting platelets that adhere to bedsheets. She refers to herself as having 'elephant, donkey' skin and emphasises the thoughtless perfection of others'.

She also grants her body a hieroglyphic power. The psychogeography of scar tissue. Fusco says of her scars they 'remember what I cannot'. We become aware of her burden. With eczema you carry the marks of your compulsion around. You wear your shame on your skin. And it literally keeps you up at night. A powerful, physical release.

Those drawn to extended spoken word explorations situated in avant-garde instrumentation will enjoy Cosey Fanni Tutti’s Time to Tell. ECZEMA! is available to stream and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Yves Malone — Beyond the Before

Beyond the Before makes no bones about its intentions. Its opening seconds play out like a John Carpenter title sequence; a goofy shot of propulsive 80s horror-house synth-pop. From here onwards the fun doesn't let up. Over seven extended tracks, Yves Malone conjures gory images from a non-existent midnight movie — one as unsettling as it is joyous.

There is a buzzing, harpsichord-like quality to the synth tone used, which contributes to this atmosphere greatly. Oneohtrix Point Never's Age Of used a similar tone to the same baroque effect last year. But in practice, his and Malone's music couldn't be more different.

In fact, Malone’s work bears more resemblance to synthwave pioneer Com Truise’s (Seth Haley). Haley's music brought forth nostalgia for non-existent times. It parodied the retro-futurism of eighties music and cinema. Beyond the Before has the same kitschy appeal.

If Haley is an eerie ancestor of the vaporwave movement, Beyond the Before is like a bittersweet photo album of him. It emphasises the tender melancholy inherent to trashy horror, just as Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein's Stranger Things soundtrack did in 2016.

That isn't to say this is a pastiche of Com Truise, or a shade of any of Haley's work. In fact, Malone's ambitions extend far beyond Haley's. Tracks often descend into beautiful noise sections in their final throes. They carry grooves for as long as ten minutes. It all looks positively avant-garde next to the no-frills synth-pop of In Decay.

And it is in these moments of experimentation that Beyond the Before lifts off. Synthwave is a genre which can exploit already-tired tropes of 80s yuppie music for the yuppies of today. But Malone often transcends the cynicism of their contemporaries to touch something sublime. This tape might not change the future. But at least it isn't trying to take the world back thirty years. An absolute riot.

You needn’t look further than John Carpenter and Alan Howarth’s masterful Prince of Darkness soundtrack for your horror synth fix. But, before that, purchase or stream Beyond the Before here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Toy — Happy in the Hollow

Toy, The Horrors’ gloomier younger brother, have been guilty of not living up to the promises that their self-titled debut deafeningly announced back in September 2012. Since then, 2013’s Join The Dots and 2016’s Clear Shot felt too easy, resting in-between mechanical krautrock rhythms and swirling shoegaze. Although very ‘in vogue’ over the last seven years, Toy never struck the balance between great songwriting and spectacular walls of sound that their first full-length managed.

However, Happy in the Hollow feels like a watershed moment for the Brighton band. Having split with Heavenly Records in 2018, signing with Tough Love and then releasing their first self-produced record, Happy in the Hollow was always going to be a make-or-break album.

The first track, ‘Sequence One’ instantly feels more direct than anything on their last two releases, maintaining the fingerprints of their well-documented influences, but with a greater emphasis on melody and a much more confident and convincing vocal performance from Tom Dougall. This song is emblematic of the album generally, as melody seems to have been the key driving force behind much of the songwriting on Happy in the Hollow. This is refreshing to hear, and gives the band a vitality that hasn’t been present since 2012.

There are still moments where Tom’s thin and ghostly vocals can’t quite go toe to toe with the rest of the band’s instrumentation, such as on the track ‘Energy’, where the rattling pummel of Charlie Salvidge’s drumming and the angular post-punk stylings of the guitar line make the vocal performance seem rather limp. On the song ‘Strangulation Day’, the sustained synth notes allow the vocals to take center stage, but they are just not quite strong enough to carry the song. Mercifully, this is one of the shorter tracks on the album.

However, this record is definitely a step in the right direction for the band. The focus on melody has bolstered both the jangle-pop sensibility of tracks like ‘Mechanism’ and ‘You Make Me Forget Myself’, as well as the extended soundscapes in ‘Jolt Awake’ and ‘The Willo’. The latter track reveals a new side of the band’s sound, taking influences from sixties and seventies folk rock bands that give the album much more focus, reigning in the slightly more indulgent psychedelic freak-outs that they were guilty of on previous efforts. 

Happy in the Hollow is ultimately the documentation of a band finding a more unique and definitive sound that relies slightly less on wearing their influences on their proverbial sleeve. Stepping into uncharted territory, both personally and musically, has reignited that spark that many saw when the band first erupted onto the scene. Is it flawed? Yes, but Happy in the Hollow has a claim to being the band’s most coherent and engaging release to date, proving we’re not quite finished playing with this particular toy just yet.

Curious newcomers should seek out Toy’s self-titled album TOY, their single ‘Left Myself Behind’, and the ‘Make It Mine’ EP. Happy in the Hollow is available for streaming and purchase here.

Words by Jack Dice