This album was released a while ago (2016) but BM does not think it was much picked up on, so overdue for a bit of a going over…
There are six tracks, starting with ‘A Natural Satellite’, a 12 minute warm-up of bleeps, feedback and general noise, a prequel to the main event. It sounds like pieces of a steam engine firing up after a long time in the shed (one train analogy allowed per review…)…
Next track ‘Grace Jones’ also takes some time to warm up, and is again lengthy – it does however get down on a heavy beat and sticks to it, over 8 minutes of brooding and shredding noise… There is a disembodied vocal also, sounding hellish…
The high tempo ‘Karnak’ gives up a bit more about this Groop – massive sax parps, thundering percussion, again disembodied vocals, a pulsating backing bass track, the overall effect being something like the soundtrack to a bad seance, in hell. And maybe some jazz…
Track 4, ‘The Murder of Maria Marten’ is again lengthy, more spaced out, and actually sounding a bit prog, some shades of King Crimson (blushes from BM) but yeah…
The tune which first drew BM to this combo was the gargantuan cacophony of ‘Nightime Worker’, which builds slowly but ends up in a six minute epic. BM is not sure if it is a digeridoo or a sax, but it sounds scary – vocals sound more like ‘Metal Box-era Public Image via Throbbing Gristle…
And the closing ‘Murder Witness’ again gives the sax space, and the percussion space, to do freeform stuff, but the vocals are even more menacing…
An unsettling but satisfying listen…recommended!