Sutcliffe Jugend
Blue Rabbit
Crucial Blast Records
This is one of those records that I almost hate but ultimately it's totally successful. Musically this is so angry, grim and intimate that I can't help but enjoy this. I imagine that the artist responsible, Kevin Tomkins, is a creepy dude based on both the music and the deranged sexual writings that deal with murder and molestation. I have mentioned in the past that the noise/industrial/drone correlation with sexual imagery, especially when referencing child molestation and rape, kind of bores me. I kinda feel like Taint in the mid 1990's pretty much did it best. This on the other hand is so well done that I can't write this off as anything other than totally realized and brilliant work. The loops, drones, spoken vocals, noise, chimes, grindings and scrapings create such an intimate, anxiety inducing record that you would be doing yourself a great disservice not being damaged by this.
As far as the artwork is concerned it's a bit off for me. It has the right feel but I am not very attracted to the artwork. It's messy naive paintings of bunnies and chaos. The type is not bad. Whoever designed it understands ligatures and leading quite well. That's refreshing. I would hesitate to use italics in the way they have chosen to and the text looks a little stretched in some spots but in general it is pretty well done.
Would I buy this? yeah, if i could hear it first.
Love this album. One of my records of the year thus far... will definitely be high on the Hammer Smashed Sound year-end list.
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