Space Afrika, the Manchester/Berlin-based duo of Joshua Tarelle Reid and Joshua Inyang, make raw, intensely detailed, visceral music with shades of ambient, trip-hop, techno, and modern classical, drawing spacious urban dubscapes from the contours of their city.

'Quiet Storm' expands on their sound and scale as a sprawling, collaborative vision shaped with profound patience and intention, embedding their own coming-of-age story within a moving suite of cathartic abstraction. Songs allude to spirituality and the human condition, the tension between boldness and softness, ambition and persistent inner demons.

Speaking to the multidisciplinary nature of the project is the involvement of celebrated artist Glenn Ligon, whose work deals with Black identity and queerness. A central inspiration at the onset of recording, Ligon offered his work Figure #30 (2009) for the cover artwork, and following the completion of recording, he agreed to provide the project's name—an unprecedented gesture from the pioneering artist.

Listening to the final sequence, Ligon thought of "Quiet Storm," the 1970s radio format known for smooth, late-night programming with themes of life and love.

'Quiet Storm' brings the listener through various scenes, interludes, and arcs, marked by a sense that its movement is fluid and its characters are fleeting. Into-the-mirror monologues grapple with the existential and the immediate: survival, autonomy, purpose.

The album opens with the explosive, string-backed 'Vanity', featuring Grammy Award winner Axelle Fanyo. At first fixated on the crevices of a quiet room, “Vanity” unfurls under Fanyo's expressive soprano, traversing a wide emotional spectrum from sublime contemplation to poignant, heart-piercing pain.

Throughout the record, words spoken and sung are placed sparingly to powerful effect. '2MLN's beauty and catharsis is a collective slow march, featuring British-Nigerian artist Tony Njoku, with guitar and lead bass by Gabriel Evans, London's PIKE on drums, and Copenhagen's GB on keys and strings.

Heavy yet hopeful, Joshua Tarelle Reid and Joshua Inyang remind you of their journey so far. An appropriately cryptic and transportive outro for their open-ended opus, 'Quiet Storm' is a landmark level-up: self-produced, self-funded, and manifested out of sheer drive and conviction.
Through bent time and low-lit haze, undoubtedly, Space Afrika has arrived.

TRACK LISTING

1. Vanity (ft. Axelle Fanyo)
2. Crying Never Had a Voice ~ (ft. Vanessa Bedoret)
3. From the Heart of Knowing (ft. Alto Aria)
4. Ballad for A'G' (ft. RXK Nephew, Klein)
5. Black and Gold
6. H00D Ambient Validation (ft. Any1)
7. 2MLN (ft. Tony Njoku)
8. We Live. Joy
9. Pretty Gospel (ft. Kiala Ogawa)
10. If This Is Hell (ft. Deuén Regards)

ADULT. is not cooperating. For over 25 years, the dystopian Detroit synth-punk institution founded by Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller has embodied steadfast frustration, distrust, and apprehension. One might expect the edges to soften with time, but ADULT. is not interested in the comforts of legacy. The duo’s music has never sounded as visceral, urgent, and downright angry as it does on the culminating, uncompromising 'Kissing Luck Goodbye'.

Built with upgraded gear and a new library of sounds, the material is crushingly dynamic—louder yet clearer—with Kuperus’ commanding delivery given greater prominence in the mix, outlining an arsenal of vivid, caustic calls, chants, and musings. Laughter, whether in the lyrics or as a possessed presence, serves as a leitmotif that speaks to the menacing absurdity of modern times.

TRACK LISTING

1. Affordable
2. Wishing Luck Goodbye
3. R U 4 $ALE
4. No
5. One Is Coming
6. No Song
7. Freaks
8. None Of It's Fun
9. Human(e) Volume
10. So Unpleasant
11. Destroyers

Begging Dog is the indie punk project of Los Angeles-based artist Jeff Kleinman. An outlet for his work outside of the band Choir Boy, Begging Dog finds Kleinman embracing a raw, homespun sound with nods to garage punk and plain language lyricism. 'DEMO 1' is 26 minutes packed with rolling bass and synth lines, charismatic riffs, and motorik drum beats. Lyrically, the songs feature a range of lived-in observations, scenes, and characters: a pushy union rep; a mailman with a steady federal job; a compulsive gambler; a beloved neighbourhood homeless man. Ex-loves become collaged together, haunting several tracks, out of context, with blunt, sharp-witted free verse.

Kleinman cites Bruce Springsteen as an inspiration in how his songs are penned with plain ink, opting for direct simplicity over flowery prose. He taps into a shared loneliness, both universal and perhaps especially unique to living in Los Angeles, with no-frills nuance and vulnerability. On the title track, Kleinman sings, “no one loves a begging dog,” in a line borrowed from a friend that embodies the project’s point of view: the world can make you feel like a begging dog in search of affection and security, but there is beauty in solitude and the buzzing monotony of it all.

The synth-laced 'Laughing Boy' contemplates the meaning of life, decrying high rent while noting the scent of jasmine trees in the same breath as the jarring police presence. On 'Common Place', surrounded by urgent drum machine kicks and distortion, he sings about feeling truly alive at a 7-Eleven downtown, then darts between a tragedy he witnessed at a park and fond memories of living communally in Salt Lake City, before declaring his new mantra: “It’s over.” The contrasts here are what make these songs human. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Begging Dog
2. Cave In On Me
3. Money Tree
4. The Eel
5. Laughing Boy
6. Clamshell Tune
7. Continuing Education
8. Tell Me That You Love Me
9. Common Place
10. Here For A Good Time

'Cleaning Out The Empty Administration Building' is Ross Farrar's latest offering of raw, spoken word abstraction and experimental sound design, presentedhere as R.J.F. The front man for American bands Ceremony and SPICE realized his solo recording project initially as a challenge, to write songs from the ground up, learning the instrumentation and excavating his subconscious in the process. The point was not fluency in musicianship as much as vulnerability; to pull something honest from a moment, unguarded, unpolished, unapologetically amateur and pure. The collection finds Farrar engaged in open-ended poetic dialogue, crossing drum patterns and found sounds with stabs of guitar, bass, and keys. After over twenty years in the comfort and chaos of collaboration, Farrar sheds it all as a test. The results are distinctive and stirring.

Farrar’s punk pathos is present in traces of 'Cleaning...', while his clearest cues come from music built more through repetition: drone, no-wave, Avant-jazz, and beyond. His plainspoken prose nods to Lou Reed, Rowland S. Howard and other weirdo greats. His lyrics riff on love, addiction, fatherhood, and life in the modern world. “I wanted to make images that people can see clearly,”he says. Farrar used to teach writing and literature, and here he applies the simple principle heencouraged his students to follow: don’t overthink it. “I was just saying to myself, these songs should be fun. They shouldn't be stressful. Do a couple of different takes and call it, you know, don't obsess over the sounds of everything. Do whatever comes out naturally, and if you feel it, then print it”. Selected from hundreds of freeform songs he’s recorded on borrowed gear in recent years, the album presented itself over time. “It just kept coming”.

'Cleaning...’s tone has a way of bending time, displacing the listener through a hall of songs, each opening a different door into rooms that often feel eerily familiar. The gurgling bass of opener 'Advance' returns elsewhere, haunting tracks like 'Ovidian', a reference to Metamorphōsēs by the Roman poet Ovid, where Farrar waxes on the wonder of change over distant chimes. Instrumentals 'Gravity Hill', a flutter of buzzing synth and static, and 'Frogs', all strums and pots n’ pans percussion, serve as trance-inducing interstitials, adding to the power of the prosethat surrounds. 'Exile' looks back on fallouts he can no longer repair; “So much of your heart caught in my exile,” he sings with tender resignation, looping a lone piano refrain with ambling guitar chords for the collection’s most structured arrangement, a reminder of Farrar’s knack for melodic phrasings. The album ends on 'Traveling Light From Afar', a full step faster than anything that precedes it. Here, over a backbone of motorik pulses, Farrar addresses the crux of the project head-on. “I’ve been so young in my old age / Selfish & self-pitying / But that’s just narcissism–man.”It is this balance, between gritty self-interrogation and the clarity of self-awareness that comes with getting older, that the artist can make space for progress, emptying out the building, one line at a time. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Advance
2. The Solitude Of Victory
3. Ovidian
4. Gravity Hill
5. In Your City
6. Exile
7. Here Again W/ Birdy
8. Frogs
9. Strawberry
10. Traveling Light From Afar 

In the summer of 1968, an 18-year-old Genesis P-Orridge (then Neil Andrew Megson) gathered with friends in a modest attic space to experiment with sound. The result was 'Early Worm', a collection of recordings that capture the nascent creativity of an artist who would later become a pivotal figure in avant-garde music. These sessions, pressed to a single acetate in 1969, showcase a fearless exploration of noise, improvisation, and tape experiments, reflecting influences from psychedelia, Fluxus, John Cage, and beatnik Bohemia. Early Wormstands serves as a testament to P-Orridge's early commitment to pushing musical boundaries. The album's raw and unfiltered soundscapes offer listeners a rare glimpse into the foundational moments that would eventually lead to the formation of COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle, and Psychic TV. Remastered and preserved in a limited vinyl pressing, with liner notes written by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge recalling the zeitgeist of the late 60′s UK underground.

Previously thought to be missing, these never-before-available songs were created on extremely primitive equipment in the attic of 6 Links Drive, Solihull, Warwickshire, England, by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and friends using Thee Early Worm as their collective group name. Only one copy had originally been pressed on an acetate. This disc and its corresponding analogue reel-to-reel master tape were discovered in the Porridge With Everything Archives by Ryan “Gelik” Martin during a recent reorganisation. This album is mastered directly from the original reel-to-reel tape and is made available to devotees of GenesisBreyer P-Orridge’s life-long musical body of work as a missing link, and curiosity, that reveals significant structural themes and sonic textures that, with hindsight, can be seen to have remained central to her creative processes ever since. Please be aware that this is inevitably a low-fire recording intended for collectors and researchers.

TRACK LISTING

1. Joint Effort
2. Firesong
3. Mourning To Thee Dusk
4. Clockwork Cloud
5. Rather Hard To Libel
6. A Very Short Middle
7. Balloon
8. Lament
9. Breakfast
10. Thee Early Worm

SoiSong is the bright, stunning, and short-lived project conceived in 2007 by Ivan Pavlov(CoH) and Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson (of Coil). The duo combined Pavlov’s uncompromisingly visceral digital aesthetics with Sleazy's decadent, dark and whimsical approach to creation. Primarily located on the Eastern Pacific Rim, the two named the project after the Thai word for ‘two’ (song), as well as the seedy red-light quarters ("gloomy Soi’s, or alley-ways") of Bangkok. Together, they developed a unique, elegant, yet rather cryptical musical language. SoiSong’s debut full-length 'xAj3z' is a digital reference to jazz: seemingly acoustic, effervescent, boundary-breaking, digital-era entertainment where light rays and tropical heat are backed up by zeroes and ones. The album is a defining statement, and an arbiter of the possibilities in the (then-)developing late-2000s music landscape. Without the desire to be commercial, or convenient, SoiSong was not beholden to the conventions of easily defined tagging, and, in their own, "new, as-yet-un-categorizable genre," with 'xAj3z' being its masterwork. 'xAj3z' freely mixes musical styles and combines various approaches to music making: artificial vocalists are accompanied by real drums, jazz-noir arrangements meet the delicate melodics of the South Seas, and computers are made to sound warm and organic.

The album shows no apparent respect for genre-definition and aims at communicating with the listener at highest levels of emotional intensity, often lyrical, sometimes dark, on occasions amusing and even uplifting."Our songs, like Angels, are largely Mathematical." Within the album's clear emphasis on bass, a distinct element are also the artificial vocalists: beautiful, otherworldly, organic yet distinctly alien. Utilizing an image of a bespoke virtual singer created by the external members of the collective Han Li Chiou and Yuu Soijinsan Omiya, as Pavlov noted in 2025, "the voice nothing else but an instrument that operates with syllables, which is what makes the performance reminiscent of a language...Yet, regardless of how poetic it might sound to a human ear, that sequence of syllables remains completely meaningless. "In collaborating with Pavlov as SoiSong, Christopherson found the music's development natural: "I wouldn’t say thatSoiSong really resembles anything that’s come before, particularly. But if you know, and appreciate what we both did before, then that knowledge will bring more appreciation and understanding to what we do now. It’s a progression from the past to the future."On the original liner notes, Peter Christopherson provides "Melodic Primitives and vocalists" with Ivan Pavlov on "instruments and Pentium jazz processing."A standout ofxAj3z, "Dtorumi" is one of the most breathtaking songs in the catalogue raisonné of Christopherson & Pavlov’s combined output, dripping in pseudo jazz and trip hop atmospheres. With heavily gated drums, bass synthesizers and ghostly syllabic non-vocals, "Dtorumi" is a masterclass in post-90s Warp electronic music. The influence of the Eastern Pacific is a wash on "J3z", with digital bird chirps, harpsichords, upright bass stabs, and the sounds of sunlight shimmering on 3D rendered shores-reminiscent of the geographically adjacent Susumu Yokota. And new to the Dais reissue is "Lom Tum Lai Kwee", a new mix of what was originally a live track only."Lom Tum Lai Kwee" is an exercise in stereo separation, step sequencers and hallucinogenic grandeur, where the subs build into bells, twinkles, and horns, recalling the heights of Tangerine Dream’s imperial era. Album closer"Ti-Di-Ti Naoo", which in the SoiSong studios had a utopian provisional title "Thai Olympics Anthem", is reminiscent of the transformation of a concert hall from soundcheck to recital: a polite piano is carefully joined by live brass and strings, as the repeated non-lyric "ti diti naoo" echoes around the room.As 'xAj3z' ends, there’s warmth from the sun: a new dawn on the horizon line, where possibilities are endless.

TRACK LISTING

1. Amkhapaa
2. J3z
3. T-Hu Ri Toh
4. Mic Mo
5. Paer Tahm
6. Dtorumi
7. Lom Tum Lai Kwee
8. Ti-Di-Ti Naoo

Cindytalk is the mercurial, expressionist outlet of Scottish artist Cinder, inspired by the crossroads of exploratory UK post-punk and early European industrial. Her work thrives on chance and transformation, collaging elements of noise, balladry, soundtrack, catharsis, and improvisation.

"We were trying to find our own space," says Cinder of the formative period 'Camouflage Heart' emerged from, amidst a move from Edinburgh to London and Cinder's evolving exploration of gender identity, well before culture at large was equipped to understand. With contemporary discourse we see that the project manifested her transgender ideas as visceral music. The guttural, feral sound marked a notably darker turn from The Freeze's six- year run on the fringes of punk. Changing the project's name became vital, not just because they kept hearing the former was already taken, but the desire to embody the spiritual and sonic shift, "to uncover new pathways...to feminize it," she says. Cinder, with bandmates David Clancy and John Byrne, arrived at Cindytalk, a winking nod to Sindy, the British fashion doll rival to Barbie known then for its pull-string talking mechanism. "The goal was to have a more interesting narrative, more interesting dialogue. Music was ultimately my only way of talking to people. That was my conversation with the world, an abstracted conversation...an attempt to make some kind of tiny, tiny mark, if possible, you hope somebody will notice." Over the years, Cinder has heard from fans who did pick up on the signals and find refuge in 'Camouflage Heart'.

'Camouflage Heart' plays with tension and pace, from creeping to feverish to claustrophobic. The percussion moves between restless marches and barely-there pulses; for some parts, they scratched and hit a tin bath, among other objects. Guitar lines vibrate and stab as Cinder contorts her voice freely. She pulls poetry from a cerebral abyss, like "make the snake in your eye, pierce the camouflage heart" on the slow-droning centerpiece 'The Spirit Behind the Circus Dream'. In that register is raw power, both vulnerable and menacing, an ability to locate something deep and emotionally charged within. "I still remember that person who was way too intense for their own good," Cinder reflects. "I couldn't make a record like that now, certainly not vocally, while that anger hasn't dissipated; there's still a kind of warrior."

For all the destruction and disintegration of 'Camouflage Heart', Cinder maintains the objective was never full-on fatalistic; these songs seek not to destroy but to poke and provoke, to transform and heal, to find cracks of light in a crumbling world. She points to the last lines of the opening track, 'It's Luxury': "Don't look down," the lyric pines through static and rhythm. Cinder extrapolates, "I'm essentially saying, just keep fucking going. As time went on, for me, that falling became flying. 'Camouflage Heart' is the beginning of believing in flight."

TRACK LISTING

1. It's Luxury
2. Instinct (Backtosense)
3. Under Glass
4. Memories Of Skin And Snow
5. The Spirit Behind The Circus Dream
6. The Ghost Never Smiles
7. A Second Breath
8. Everybody Is Christ
9. Disintegrate ...

Since first forming in 2016, London’s High Vis have steadily polished their palette of progressive hardcore with shades of post-punk, Brit pop, neo-psychedelia, and even Madchester groove, mapping a middle ground between hooks and fury, melodies and mosh pits. Singer Graham Sayle describes their third album 'Guided Tour' as an axis of competing forces: “It’s trying to be a hopeful record, while also being incensed.” Rounded out by drummer Edward 'Ski' Harper, bassist Jack Muncaster, and guitarists Martin MacNamara and Rob Hammaren, the band’s deep roots in the UK and Irish DIY hardcore scenes have kept them grounded but growing, inspired equally  by restlessness and righteous anger. As Sayle puts it, "Everyone’s scratching, everyone’s working all the time, and their idea of relaxing is just getting fucked and avoiding reality. This album is an escape from that."

From its opening seconds of a cab door slamming, a car revving away, and a baggy rhythm swinging to life, 'Guided Tour' sounds like a band reaching for new heights, bristling with energy. Recorded across a few weeks at Holy Mountain Studios in London with producer Jonah Falco and engineer Stanley Gravett, the results feel dynamic and dialed-in, like anthems burned into sense memory through sweat and repetition. Harper cuts to the chase: "We had a clear idea going in, every moment got used. Maybe when we’re 60 we can sit around and get a drum sound right, but for now it’s about getting things done."

The album’s 11 songs span the spectrum of contemporary guitar music, sharpened by experience, camaraderie, and societal frustrations. From swaggering street punk ('Drop Me Out', 'Mob DLA') to jangling indie sneer ('Worth The Wait', 'Deserve It') to heavy alt ('Feeling Bless', 'Fill The Gap') to shoegazey spoken word ('Untethered'), the group’s chemistry transmutes any style to their unique intensity. Sayle champions this evolving fusion: "For years coming from hardcore, we had pretty clear boundaries – other scenes were separate worlds. Now things are getting more blended, drawing from different places."

Nowhere is this sentiment flexed more boldly than on 'Mind’s A Lie', a dance-punk anthem inspired by Harper’s love of house, garage, and pirate radio. Stabs of sampled female vocals (by celebrated South London singer and DJ Ell Murphy) build into a razor wire rhythm of low-slung bass, tense drums, and sparkling guitar before Sayle’s staunch voice starts barking harsh truths ("Face to face with all I’ve known / I can’t call these thoughts my own"). After a sudden breakdown, the track regroups and takes off, cruising into the horizon in a haze of chiming guitars and Murphy’s ascendant voice, from the streets to somewhere beyond.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A skilful dance through psychedelic indie, shoegaze and garage rock that is as exciting as it is raucous. Brimming with moments of hands-in-the-air melodicism and unfathomably gigantic choruses, driven and most of all, a riveting listen.

TRACK LISTING

1. Guided Tour
2. Drop Me Out
3. Worth The Wait
4. Feeling Bless
5. Fill The Gap
6. Farringdon
7. Mob DLA
8. Untethered
9. Deserve It
10. Mind's A Lie
11. Gone Forever

First compiled as a double CD in 2002, Moon’s Milk (in Four Phases) is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group's discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness.

Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, Moon's Milk captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull" initiates the proceedings on Spring Equinox, a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, Summer Solstice skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice-as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs ("Bee Stings"), purgatorial spoken word ("Glowworms/Waveforms"), sultry chamber pieces ("Summer Substructures"), and falsetto ravings ("A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)").

Autumn Equinox exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung folk ballad "Rosa Decidua" ("I hear your voice sing near to me / I've put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds") to hall-of-lords hallucination "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant” to the liminal string-plucked classic "Amethyst Deceivers," featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance’s oft-quoted couplet: "Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future."

The album’s final chapter, Winter Solstice, is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener "A White Rainbow" stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. "North" oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy ("This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour"), while "Magnetic North" is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics ("Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel"). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol ("Christmas Is Now Drawing Near"), rendered like an executioner's song by Rose McDowall’s doomed, beautiful voice.

The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare Moon's Milk Bonus Disc CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives Copal CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals ("Copal") to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus MacLise poetry ("The Coppice Meat") to ominous classical melancholia ("Bankside"). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation – both sonic and bodily. From postindustrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design.

TRACK LISTING

LP 1 - SIDE A:
Moon's Milk Or Under An Unquiet
Skull (Part 1)
Moon's Milk Or Under An Unquiet
Skull (Part 2)
Bee Stings

LP 1 - SIDE B:
Glowworms / Waveforms
Summer Substructures
A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)

LP 2 - SIDE C:
Regel
Rosa Decidua
Switches
The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant
Amethyst Deceivers

LP 2 - SIDE D:
A White Rainbow
North
Magnetic North
Christmas Is Now Drawing Near

LP 3 - SIDE E:
Copal
Bankside

LP 3 - SIDE F:
The Coppice Meat
Ü Pel (Incense Offering)

Since founding Swedish synthpop duo KITE in 2008, singer Nicklas Stenemo and keyboardist Christian Hutchinson Berg’s brooding fusion of cinematic electronics and anthemic pop has steadily elevated into a spectacle of passion, atmosphere, and communion. Their debut double-A vinyl single for Dais Records, Don't take the light away / Remember me captures KITE at their most urgent, thrilling and apocalyptic.

"Don't take the light away" is a song about “the war between energies, ”with singer Stenemo’s wounded croon leading a rising tide of stabbing strings, pulsing percussion, and looming bass orchestrated by keyboardist Hutchinson Berg, surging to a mass-chanted chorus both desperate and triumphant (“dance, let them dance into me / people versus people can’t see / hands should be holding hands”). "Remember me" was written following the band's 2017 US tour, capturing the intense feelings of burnout and exhaustion. "Remember me, Won't you remember me, Promise you'll remember me.

"Words only tell half of the story; smoke spills across the stage, and the melodies become a battle cry. Our worst fears eventually boil over, turning into hope and resilience. Like the best of KITE’s music, "Don't take the light away" and "Remember me" fuse theater and catharsis into anthems of universal yearning, born of “the struggle to keep a flickering candle lit in a very dark space.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Don't Take The Light Away
2. Remember Me

After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group’s heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one.

Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed “moon music” – post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group’s limitless insular synergy.

Opener “Something” is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. “Tiny Golden Books” unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. “Ether” is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay (“It's either ether or the other”), while “Where Are You?” and “Batwings – A Liminal Hymn” lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one’s death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight.

As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination “Paranoid Inlay” captures the group’s oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. “It seems concussion suits you,” he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: “On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster.”

TRACK LISTING

A1. Something
A2. Tiny Golden Books
B1. Ether
B2. Paranoid Inlay
C1. An Emergency
C2. Where Are You?
C3. Batwings (A Limnal Hymn)

The latest by Andrew Clinco’s acid punk alias VR SEX takes its title from an architectural phrase but more importantly refers to the warped, wicked underworld the songs both chronicle and condemn. Donning the moniker Noel Skum – an acerbic anagram of Elon Musk – Clinco vents his scorn for and fascination with the seedy, surreal margins of low-life Los Angeles, doomed to dead ends of vanity, lust, and technology. Although initially launched as an outlet for “heavier sounds” beyond Clinco’s duties in new wave fantasists Drab Majesty, the project has ripened into a compelling exercise in world building, weaving themes of gritty city neofuturist sleaze within a framework of driving, distorted guitars and cathode-blasted synths. Echoes of Chrome, Wire, Minimal Man, and Sisters Of Mercy ripple through the collection but ultimately Rough Dimension charts its own twisted vision of “our unforgiving reality.”

Written and demoed across two weeks alone in a Marseille flat using his prized 1980’s Gibson “Invader” and a laptop, Clinco then took the tracks to Strange Weather studios in Brooklyn to record with Ben Greenberg (Uniform, The Men) who helmed 2019’s debut, Human Traffic Jam. The results are notably ripping, refined, and riveting. Riffs in alternate tunings chug and churn over mid-tempo drums punctuated by spikes of sci-fi electronics while the vocals swagger and spit venom (“where we walk is also where we shit / but if we bark at our reflections are we hypocrites? / impulses bleed right into our seed / where hate culminates the apple rotted on the tree”). It’s a bristling mix of the melodic and the macabre, absurdist observations of fast living and desperate measures, the clock of youth ticking towards midnight as dreams unravel in Babylon.

VR SEX’s specialty is making these cautionary tales of psychic decay and tainted love a thrill rather than a drag. There’s a sunglasses at night glamor to Clinco’s choruses and solos, a wit to his black leather judgements (“what is the answer / to cancerous people / walking in my line of sight?”). The music’s milieu tends towards parasites and predators but its mood skews refreshingly accelerated and amused, cruising the strip with a cigarette, watching goths and limousines crawl in gridlock beneath digital billboards. The Rough Dimension may be a cesspool, but it’s home. 

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
Victim Or Vixen
Glutton For Love
Cyber Crimes Live (In A Dream)
SIDE B:
The Walk Of Shame
Crisis Stage
Taste Of Hate
Snake Water
End Vision