The brilliant Pat Murano (NNCK member who has brought out a staggering amount of high quality electronic darkness under his Decimus alias in recent years) has sent us two new LPs on his Kelippah imprint this week, which is nice. As usual with this label they’re very limited (only 300 each) and come housed in beautiful screenprinted card sleeves. This one here is a collaboration between Murano and Charalambides’ own death-defier Tom Carter.
On the grooves we have two lengthy jams. Put your needle on side A and you’ll hear a brooding creep-out with plenty of Murano’s trademark blurred, crackling loops and electro-creak dreadscapes. Once your ears adjust to the darkness, though, there’s plenty to make out - chirping synths, swelling static, a weird cyclic bassline, vocal moans, groans and mumbles, and some far-out and often heavily-effected psych guitar explorations over the top like a feverish acid trip where Expo 70 jams with Deathprod (with a totally blurzed Damo Suzuki stumbling in and grabbing the mic halfway through) in the world’s largest Ikea. Far out and fucked up.
On the other side there’s ‘Guanshiyin Pusa’, which sees more boomy grate’n’rumble from Decimus accompanied by flickering bass stabs and some squawking, feedbacky guitar from Carter, who seems to assert himself on this side a little more than the other. When the vocals come in they’re all filtered and messed up so they sound like a robot shouting through a fan, while someone starts up a petrol-driven hedge trimmer just outside the window. At the very end of the album there’s a passage of such throbbing, grinding, bubbling intensity that it makes me feel like I’m hovering a few inches off the ground. The average man on the street won’t know what to make of this stuff but if you’re into dark ambient/noise/free-expressive improvisation then you’ll probably enjoy it as much as I have!