Recorded entirely within a closed-input / fedback set-up and two antique tape machines, Howlround‘s Trespass And Welfare involves no actual input at all – samples, synths, pedals all abandoned in order to chase the ghosts in the machine.
Ghosts that for the opener “Sonicjob Horsfunk” are of the squelchy techno kind. A lovely relentless dry-ended-LFO-scooped headfuck raygunned into the cut-off choked distance. An abstract vein that runs into the purr-spasmed calculus of “Filtrate Pickup”, a mosaic concréte for a shattered Schaeffer niggled in frantic machine dialogues and sizzling circuitry, slipping a disc to the hyperactive slinky and coptering incisions of “Rec And Ruin” to gasp an asthmatic shuffle.
It’s a lot to take in, but I’m kinda hooked in hearing more as the raw fermentation drifts “Low Down The Harridan”‘s arcane rasp of disrepair. A tattered repetitive that reminds me of the loop-splattered halcyons of Zoviet France as some lovely unpredictables lash your hemispheres, and the waspy texturals suddenly slur some previously unheard muffling. The more you listen, the more these sonic sketches seem to reveal, and as the acidic glee continues to be toned down, a perfectly blended trio of tracks present themselves, ooze further magic. The slow creeping lob-lob feathered lullaby of “A Bird In The Head” gives me a surreal Bagpuss glisten, a Worship The Glitch eeriness that detaches into the whirr-void locust of “Thibauts Lacuna”, a sci-fi alarm clock levitating in an oscillating Solaris of crippled polyphonics. The syncopated slipperiness of “Cosmic Funghi Mind Muck” too, sounding like an insect-infested Conrad Schnitzler suckling on a corrosive teat, dimensionally tugging you ’round decaying contours that tighten into a contracting percussive.A mellow injective, “Volt Face” mangles in a textural Hiroshima of whipped typewriter wetness and torn wing spin, then “Mega Fickle Vouch” slowing it down to a hammocking swing. An elasticated whir-secting jive full of wording impressions, aural Rorschach blots that with every listen mysteriously reconfigure.
The rotisserie womb-wobbling of “Do What Now” is thankfully less intense, careering in a chorus line of Moomin scream-0-delics, a fluttering cuteness descending seamlessly into the skull-scribbled hysterics of “Ion Freaks Crude Din”, a gorgeously garbled affair that has Leo Sayers‘ ’70s hair trapped in a laundromat smeared in Stuka nose-dives and Pac-Man suds. Finally reintroducing a mellow maul to proceedings, the warped horizon-thrown pleasure of “Frosi” recaptures the strangeness of that “A Bird In The Head” track, a cloudy lemonade repeat that promises plenty but burns far too quickly. A short-lived joy that opens out into the infant EVP of “Untitled” that ends things in an uneasy shudder as the machine absentmindedly sings what can be clearly recognised as “Happy Birthday”.Heaven knows where this series of happened-upon accidents will lead.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
