Feels Like Love

A few weeks ago a friend sent me a link to an album celebrating it's tenth anniversary, one that has been re- released on limited pink vinyl with a fetching t- shirt to match- Psychic 9 - 5 Club by HTRK. The group are from Melbourne, Australia, a city someone described to me recently as 'one of the nicest places to live anywhere on earth'. HTRK (Hate Rock) go back to 2003, a three piece made up of vocalist Jonnine Standish, bassist Sean Stewart and guitarist Nigel Yang. They have traversed various minimal and experimental styles, with a restless energy to their music, sometimes sounding alternately bored to tears and post- coital, sometimes at the same time. Their debut album was produced by The Birthday Party's Rowland S. Howard, with punk and industrial influences, a slow mo drum machine and bass, textures and atmosphere. They moved into and through post- punk, cold wave and electronic, moving to London, playing gigs with Alan Vega, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Horrors and Fuck Buttons. 

In 2010 the band was struck by horror- bassist Sean Stewart was found dead at his London flat, having killed himself. They were partway through recording an album that eventually came out as Work (Work Work), an album of heavy, synth led songs that sound like they have an ominous calling. After that, now working as a duo, Jonnine and Nigel recorded Psychic 9- 5 Club, an album that pushes their sound further again into new territories- the beats and bass are nod to modern r'n'b, to some strange downbeat, dubbed up version of trip hop, by the huge, echo- laden dub spaces of Basic Channel. There are skeletal, pared back beats, minimal instrumentation, loops and a few brooding lines of vocal, the odd line delivered in a smoky bedroom voice. It's a world of its own- intense, languid, mysterious, not giving much away but sometimes saying too much- 'I got mood swings I got no control of', Jonnine coos at one point.  It's an album that works well as an entire piece, the flow through the nine tracks as important part of its appeal, from the r'n'b sounds of Give It Up and the stuttering drums and Portishead vibes of Sunshine to the ghostly, dubby Wet Dream and the more clamorous sounds of Love Is Distraction. 

This song is as good a taster as any, sequenced midway through side one- Feels Like Love. Hissing drum machine percussion inside a ball of dub space, synths and minimal descending bass, what could be someone exhaling breath, a looped snatch of backing vocal, FX phasing from the back to front of the mix and towards the end a short burst of laughter, suddenly undercutting the tension. 

Feels Like Love