Manchester-based purveyors of forward-thinking sound adventures Front & Follow have called upon the services of bassist Michael Donnelly for the second part of their ongoing series Ex Post Facto. Here, artists are given an opportunity to prepare a new piece of work which is then presented alongside an overview of previous recordings.
His warm overloaded bass starts the journey off, a swaying rhythm introducing “Motions Are Man”. The watery effects obscure an ’80s rock beat that is reminiscent of something hidden in the recesses of the brain that can’t quite be reached. The overwhelming glare of sunlight causes imbalance of anything with which it comes into contact on “Bright White Room Below”; images are unfocused, and shimmer and shake with metallic force. A cistern fills in some abandoned corridor, just out of reach, and threads are lost and found in the ebb and flow. Sounds are scattered and disparate, swept up in gathering stormclouds, echoing, dark and throbbing.
There is the feeling of song structure in “Cupid’s Vagaries”, but stripped down to a tribal, almost gothic beat, while fissures steam and sweat underground. The simple guitar line and cymbal swish prepares us partway for the appearance of bass on “The Scourge Is Upon Us”. That trademark sound lends an element of groove to the found soundscape, and a warmth that gradually becomes distorted and cumbersome, drifting off into ancient territory, tying nicely into the Dr Who warp factor of “Thick Skull”, which with its leaden drumbeat and whirling distortion sends the listener off into the far reaches. Why So Mute, Fond Lover? is over far too soon at just over half an hour, but the extra tracks that accompany the album more than make up for it.
The bonus download album Pardon Error concentrates mainly on remixes of two earlier tracks; “Mole Man” and “Behind The Laburnum”, the originals of which appear on very limited releases from yesteryear. “Behind The Laburnum” plumbs a kind of 1980s detective vibe, the playful bass hiding a sense of pursuit, of unseen characters lurking in dishevelled doorways, while “Mole Man” is more glitchy toytown, disorientating underwater bass lending a liminal quality, undergrowth creeping under eaves and upsetting the equilibrium.
Kemper Norton‘s version, with its half-hearted, pulsing beat full of unrecognisable fragments, is hazy and focusless; while Polypores sends it out to the ionosphere, and we watch as it draws further from sight, a speck in the distance. Finally, Psychological Strategy Board turn it into an urgent shimmer, with alarms sending us out into a windy, stormy night; a sci-fi soundtrack for exploration with a slow build of tension. Two artists tackle “Laburnum”, with Rothko adding gorgeous bass that aches and slides through a soundscape of drifting tidal flow; and Elite Barbarian turns it into tribal techno with sighing voices.
All of the remixers here do so much with the source recordings that they become essential listens in their own right. There are two further tracks from the back catalogue, the blistered cut-up road rage of “Root About The Carcass”, and the swollen pulses of “Urge To Swarm” that shimmer and gyrate before retracting and emerging again, dragging earth and rock in their lumbering wake. Pardon Error is an immersive listen that adds something completely different to the main disc; between the two, there is plenty to sink the teeth into. Roll on volume three, but before that arrives, luxuriate in this.-Mr Olivetti-
