various / 14 tracks

14 tracks: According to custom

As much as we try to resist, the allure of darkside romance is a recurring theme round here. This particular, thorny bouquet of tracks is headed up by one of the songs of the year, Regis' 'Blinding Horses' and traverses through tribal rhythms, arcane Post-Punk pop and granite-hewn electro-acoustics in some hope of satisfying unheimlich urges. It takes in a pre-Skull Disco missive from Shackleton beside the intuitive sonic architecture of Demdike Stare's Miles Whittaker, through to rhythmic post-punk deviations from Water Borders, Amit, Severed Heads and Morphosis. At its apex, we find Mika Vainio's jaw-dropping interpretation of The Stooges' 'Open Up And Bleed', before the final descent through Mondkopf's cinematic sound design, discomforting Italian Industrial from Cicciolina Holocaust, and the subterranean machinations of The Haxan Cloak, Alberich and Mike Weis. We hate to say it but the autumn evenings are steadily closing in, although we could think of worse things to do than drawing the curtains and playing these tracks loud...