Föllakzoid — I

Few acts induce a trance as well as Föllakzoid. Their work is languorous and full of space, mirroring a release pattern that's just as unhurried. Fans have been on tenterhooks since the Chilean group's 'III' in 2015, but they can rest easy. It's clear that those four years have been put to good use.

With their new album, 'I', Föllakzoid have refined and re-jigged, no longer recording in collaborative single takes. Instead, phrases and instrumentals have been laid down piecemeal and stitched together by German producer Atom™, a party not present for the stems' recording.

This obfuscation of process, this disassembled assembly, situates Föllakzoid's music in a non-authorial space. More so than any of their past work, this album feels like it grew — rather than was pulled — into being. The fingerprint of an artist is hard to detect. Instead, you feel like you're tuning into some primal frequency; the oscillations of the earth.

When discussing Föllakzoid, and especially 'I', it's hard to avoid platitudes and new age-isms. They reject analysis, blow soot in the face of theory, occupy themselves with the pure and the experiential. This is a listening experience to disappear to, hanging in the air invisibly like dust at midnight.

I is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

HIDE — Hell is Here

The history of power electronics is a cacophony of male voices. Recent years have seen the genre broaden, and welcome more alternative perspectives. That’s where HIDE stake their territory, with their new album Hell is Here.

Heather Gabel and Seth Sher, the duo peeping out from behind HIDE, explore themes of objectification, abuse and dehumanisation with a unique gothic vulnerability. Gabel's vocals walk a tightrope between Billy Joe Armstrong's iHeart Festival meltdown, and the inscrutable screaming of Pharmakon. The Baby Bear's porridge of extreme vocals, they fall into a great middle ground, in the domain of doom metal geniuses Couch Slut.

And like Couch Slut, HIDE wrap themselves around the skeleton of hardcore. Gabel's targets are clear, her lyrics no-nonsense. Sincerity and social consciousness go a long way in a genre overrun with theatricality and shock tactics.

Hell is Here swerves another noise pitfall, too. It's texturally rich, and demands to be turned up. 999 has a bassline that could as easily be mechanical creaking as a distorted vocal sample. The album's title track is rendered almost unlistenable (in the best way) by a relentless wail; half klaxon, half crying baby. The organic and inorganic collide, over and over again, with the force of a sledgehammer.

And some tracks offer respite. 'Grief' approaches industrial disco with the buoyant energy of a deep-fried Depeche Mode. Its lyrics are sardonic and creepy, with a sinister mundanity. 'Treat yourself/ you deserve it/ you've earned it' reads like something a half-asleep Mark E. Smith would have scribbled onto a lager-stained napkin (that's a good thing, for anyone unfamiliar with the man).

HIDE are living proof noise needn't be immature, boyish or mean-spirited. Hell is Here is a concise, righteous, and good-hearted release that tries to scream the world out of apathy.

Hell is Here, releasing on the 23rd of August, is available for pre-order here. Hear its first single here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Dean Hurley — Anthology Resource Vol. II: Philosophy of Beyond

Dean Hurley's Anthology Resource Vol. I, a compiled forty minutes of underscore and menacing sound design, sat oddly in its album format. Originally appearing in David Lynch's revived Twin Peaks, now untethered, tracks felt disjointed, wandering; as labyrinthine, and cavernous with potential readings as the show they lived in.

Anthology Resource Vol. II: Philosophy of Beyond demystifies things a little — but scatters itself even further; the windborne ash of Vol. I's electrical fire. Still mostly composed of soundtrack snippets (this time from Eddie Alcazar's Perfect), Hurley's work stands now as a more successful whole.

While a clear stickler for detail, Hurley has here taken more of a 'big-picture' approach, unifying the tracks on Vol II with a clear, common theme. It's simple, it's been done before, but it's ripe for exploration: where do we go when we die, when we sleep? Hurley explores the unseen worlds around and above us, atomising his sound in the process.

Long sweeps of beautiful ambience are the air shimmering above Vol. I's boiling tarmac; burning just as hot, but with a dance instead of a stink. This release really shows Hurley's versatility, and stands as a worthy companion to its predecessor.

Anthology Resource Vol. II is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

LINGUA IGNOTA — CALIGULA

Any attempt to categorise the work of LINGUA IGNOTA is an exercise in futility. An alias for Californian musician Kristin Hayter, it covers an overwhelmingly broad spectrum of musical styles. It incorporates baroque, noise, metal, liturgical Medieval; in short, an astonishing, almost comical level of variety. Hayter herself has tremendous versatility as a performer; her voice switching between whisper and roar at a moment's notice. But every deployment of style, every pastiche, is controlled and considered. CALIGULA is more tapestry than patchwork.

This album is more easily assessed with some context. Early in her career, Hayter migrated from California to Rhode Island, ingratiating herself with members of the island's active noise scene. It was in this scene that she suffered domestic abuse from a 'very powerful noise musician'.

Noise and power electronics are oversaturated with the contemporary equivalent of shock-rock; men who use the language of abuse to provide audiences with a visceral thrill. Many bands do little more than describe a violent, often sexually motivated attack, and punctuate it with stabs of harsh noise. CALIGULA exposes this mode of expression as dull and irresponsible — and the scene which bore it as toxic.

Hayter's lyrics are vengeful, apocalyptic, and delivered with unbearable emotion. She is possessed by her own trauma, her own rage. Noise leans very often on disgust, but there is a sort of horrific triumph to CALIGULA; like the vanguard of angels with their seven trumpets. It’s a refreshing, rare approach. LINGUA IGNOTA is shaking the muck loose from her scene. She’s invigorating it, revolutionising it, and melting everyone's ears in the process.

CALIGULA is available to purchase and stream here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

ana roxanne — ~~~

Bandcamp, niftily, allows artists to choose which genre their work belongs to when uploading. The more conventional the music, the easier this categorisation is to make. But at the shoreline, the fringes of its own body, water becomes frothier; more opaque. Categorisation is considerably more difficult. Genres and styles overlap.

Dip into releases tagged as 'devotional', and an overwhelming majority of the material you will find has been labelled so as either a joke, an unexplored grab at spirituality, or just a fundamental misunderstanding of the word's meaning. Grimes infamously named herself after, and uploaded her early work, under the genre of 'grime' — a decision based on nothing more than the pleasure of the word in her ears and her mouth. 'Devotional' seems to undergo this same treatment fairly often.

ana roxanne's ~~~ is, however, everything it claims to be. It's a series of mysterious, droning compositions that wouldn’t be out of place on a tanpura. Its stark, sincere lyrics, whose ability to hold each song in its own capsule, unmoving in time, seem to conjure the divine from the air around them. roxanne's vocal delivery is beautiful, too. Restrained but raw, and enhanced by its swaddling of obfuscating post-production elements.

This work recalls Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s powerful late works, but with a pleasing absence, or vaccuum, that Coltrane’s work lacked. The listening experience is not overwhelming, or disorientating. ~~~ is an open door, with space inside it that listeners can walk into, occupy, and fill.

In truth, there is little to say about ~~~ beyond an unreserved recommendation. This is just a perfectly balanced release, brimming with suggestion and delicacy. It's the sort of music which holds breaths, slows hearts, and brushes eyes closed. A promising, wonderful debut, which treats every second of your time like a gift.

~~~ is available for streaming and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe