Belfast Two Pack

 A double serving of musical goodies from Belfast for Tuesday. First comes Black Bones (Timmy Stewart) and an EP with Bradford producer Miles J Paralysis where they take two tracks each over two sides of a 12". Timmy is a Belfast veteran, cutting his teeth with a residency at David Holmes' Art College and since promoting various nights of his own around the city. Black Bones, Timmy plus Aaron Black, have released a slew of tracks in the last year, dark and thundering electronic music with dub and techno always close to the surface. On the Black Cross EP they serve up Psychic Rain Dance, slo mo industrial rhythms and acidic synth wobbles with bursts of unintelligible vocals, and Low Voltage Dreams, an even slower slice of atmospheric dub techno, with insistent percussion and a bassline that bangs at your front door open and demands to be let in. 

Miles pitches in with Twilight, serious industrial acid house with ominous vocal samples, and Two Up, a more minimal ambient techno sub- bass dive. The payoff line at the Bandcamp page (where you can get vinyl and digital) is, 'Weapons grade DJ tools for the margin travelers', which is good but I don't think you need to be a DJ to enjoy this quartet of tracks. They work equally well as home listening or out on the move. 

Deeply Armed are a Belfast band I saw them play at The Golden Lion earlier this year and I really enjoyed the single they put out last year, The Healing. They have returned with Black Ice, a confrontational and swaggering song that rides in on a bassline that sounds so close and so live, that the bass guitar itself could right there in the room with you, bass amp speaker overloaded and vibrating while singer Michael sounds like a young Ian Brown. 

The EP comes with two remixes, one a stripped down, skeletal outing by Sleaford Mods Andrew Fearn and the second a reworking by Mad Professor. The Mad Professor Cold Black Dub is a monster, the song turned inside out, the bass guitar unanchored and a psychedelic dub blur of FX throwing the rules out of the window. Everything- vocals, chords and bass- sound like someone playing Metal Box from inside a washing machine in the next room. Get all three here.