It’s grim up North, and this tape, recorded in Leeds in 2007, does little to break the stereotype. Erases are Lee Stokoe (Culver, Skullflower), George Proctor (Mutant Ape and honcho at Turgid Animal) and Dean Glaister. Here they offer us two sides of bleak and blackened drone: as desolate as England’s coal mines, as unforgiving its moors. There is little progression or development, just dogged grind, crackles and screech all getting lost in the turbulence. The lack of clarity - all sounding like it was recorded from the other end of an empty hangar - is, I’m sure, intentional, though at times it seems to take the teeth out of their material, dampening the impact of the occasional blurts that puncture the enveloping storm clouds. Things close in a bit part-way through the second side, gritty shrieks and malfunctioning machinery lurching into the foreground dragging all manner of damage and feedback with them, and suddenly it really gels, the cosy voyeuristic distance of the first half is blown away and the ear scratching detail prevails. It’s a magnificently evocative journey through a windswept post-industrial wasteland of crumbling masonry and rusted girders, coming in close to Bob Bellerue’s Redglaer project.Turgid Animal
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