Trellick
Meatgrinder
self-released
The artwork for Scots industrial project Trellick has generally leaned towards brutalist shapes and structures, an appropriate visual accompaniment to the project’s rough sonic textures. New EP Meatgrinder finds further developments afoot, as elements of EBM and dark electro have come more to the fore, contrasting the rhythmic noise like origins of the project. The bassline for “Those Other Escapes” certainly recalls modern body music sounds, emerging late in the track from amid ghostly wind and far-off vocals. “State of Fear” picks up, revolving around a simple synthloop that provides a solid foundation for a rotating arrangement of distorted percussion sounds, growing denser and bleaker as more and more static noise make their way into the mix. The suggestion of abandoned and consequently haunted cityscapes is driven home through the harsh minimalism of closer “People Used to Live Here”, where encroaching noise serves as a audio metaphor for urban decay. It’s a fine contrast with both the title track and “The Ugly Kind of Crying” which go much larger and more immediately impactful, the former with corrosive doses of acid, and the latter via big beat-touched programming, a track suitable for raves in the abandoned concrete plant. It’s all hard-hitting and austere while never succumbing to hopelessness – the tempered anger at the state of things serves as Trellick’s accelerant, burning cleaner and brighter than ever before.
Blakmoth
Behölder
self-released
Baltimore producer Blakmoth’s turned out a wide ranging yet still distinct slew of releases, both long and short form, in the years since we’ve started tracking his work. While they’ve ranged in theme and delivery, the overarching alchemical mixture of moods and emotions brought about through his use of of drones always carries a particular register, and new release Behölder (too short for an LP, too long for an EP) maintains that current despite field testing a range of sounds in relatively short order. By the standards of dark ambient Behölder feels fast-moving and varied, never holding to one tone or toolkit for very long. The mournful strings which sweep downward through “Mörte Gale” is somewhat reminiscent of how acts like Gorgyra and Randal Collier-Ford have integrated ancient folk sounds into their atmospheres, while the slowly rotating winds and pads of “Blood In The Furrows” manages to carry the chilling horror of classic Megaptera out into the realm of cosmic dark ambient in just four minutes. That range makes Behölder as good a jumping on point for Blakmoth as any release we’ve heard from him, but even the neophyte will in short order begin to feel the distinct, fatalistic undertow which defines his work and ultimately distinguishes him from those other points of comparison.
