A Certain Ratio's It All Comes Down To This is one of 2024's most played albums round these parts. Last week they announced the release of a 7" single, a song and a dub of the song recorded during the sessions for the album with producer Dan Carey- Clockwork Orange. ACR have refused to stand still and repeat themselves. This song shows them continuing to break new ground- it kicks into life with Jez's FXed voice intoning, 'tock tick tock tick', and a grimy industrial groove, a bassline that buzzes ominously and then a second Jez vocal, verses and choruses about cruelty, hatred and a clockwork orange. The distorted, grinding rhythm nods to one- time Factory label mates, early 80s Cabaret Voltaire, but this is still very much ACR being no- one else but ACR.
More new music? I shared Er... Hello? by OBOST earlier this year, an absurdly accomplished and wonderful album made by seventeen year old Bobby Langfield and an EP of remixes of his song I Don't Want To Be Alone (including one by Richard Sen whose forthcoming album India Man promises to be one of 2024's highlights). Bobby/ OBOST has recently remixed the work of a classical pianist Christian Blandford, taking tracks from Christian's album The Waves and editing/ remixing them into one piece, The Waves (OBOST Unification Mix). There's a minute of juddering, out of time and out of sync sound, pianos glitching, and then it all suddenly snaps into place- a drum track rattles away, layers of piano and synths come and go, all flowing onwards and together/ against each other. Really good stuff. Find it here.
Let's complete a Tuesday new music trio with Sheffield's Crooked Man whose It's My Pleasure- Part 4 came out at the end of last week in three versions- a lush, mid- tempo nine minute main mix, an instrumental and an acapella. There's a lot going on, layers of synths, drums, ripples of sounds, a house vocal, and an insistent groove that grows increasingly percussive and intense. The EP is at Bandcamp. In a neat link to the Cabaret Voltaire sounds of the ACR song that opened this post, Crooked Man aka Richard Barratt was one half of legendary Sheffield bleep techno pioneers Sweet Exorcist along with the Cab's Richard H. Kirk. Cab it up.
1 comment:
ACR really are on a roll these days aren't they? I think this might even be my favourite era of theirs actually, and that's saying something. I think I do prefer them in the more recent slightly more stripped back approach...they really don't need to over embellish their stuff with too many guests.
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