Mind Control Hands

Mysterious, primitive lo-fi ‘pop’ from Swedish enigma Mind Control Hands - was anyone ever meant to hear this?

Something of a needle in a haystack.  The depths of the internet are flooded with snippets of information about enigmatic CDrs, often no more than a crusty JPG and a bit of text, if you’re really lucky a single track to listen to.  The vast majority are of no interest, but perseverance pays off.  Mind Control Hands, originally birthed in the endless sprawl of CD-baby era early 00s micro-releases (on the aptly titled ‘Bedroom Records’) is exactly the sort of gem that makes the search worth while.  It’s an intimate batch of crude jangly songwriting, utilising what sounds like mostly the contents of a domestic kitchen for percussion,  strange cyclical (domestic industrial??) song structures and fuzzed guitar chords, all topped with something of a soft, shy, introverted voice.

The whole thing is set in an uncanny haze where the depth of field is totally distorted, laced with subtle moments of joy and anxiety in equal measure.  It’s a riddle that’s a joy to unwrap, evoking the songier moments of Crawling With Tarts or fellow Swede’s Rough Bunnies but in a manner even more spangled and skeletal.  With that, I’m struggling to think of anything that could compete with how extremely outsider yet utterly endearing this is, I guess we’ll never know more about Mind Control Hands - I assume that’s how he likes it - but it’s a pleasure to bring this back into the world.