Cosey Fanni Tutti — Tutti

Last year saw the re-release of 1981's Mission of Dead Souls, a recording of what was at the time Throbbing Gristle's final performance. It's difficult to overstate Throbbing Gristle's level of influence and forward thinking. No words could convey this as well as Mission of Dead Souls itself — still sounding newer and more contemporary than most work released almost forty years later.

It's arguable that Cosey Fanni Tutti has become a victim of her own success. To casual listeners, Tutti sounds like more of the same; something which, in many artists, would indicate complacency. But it feels like Throbbing Gristle’s members left no stone unturned. It's miracle enough that their output doesn't sound worn away, haggard, derelict. 'More of the same', with these people, means more provocation; more progress.

And it's not identical. There is one obvious difference between Tutti and Cosey’s previous solo work. Time to Tell examined the psychological toll of femininity and the sex industry through spoken word. Its style has been aped many times and by many acolytes, including recently Jenny Hval on Blood Bitch. But on Tutti, this device is dropped, letting the music speak for itself.

The music speaks loudest when Cosey focuses least on rhythm. 'Sophic Ripple' is the standout on Tutti by virtue of its oddity; memorable as a mood or a soundscape. By contrast, the album's riff-driven title track is entertaining, but slightly disposable. Whatever feeling it tries to inspire barely makes it off the ground. So Tutti is a mixed bag — but that's to be expected when Cosey herself has described the album as 'not locked into any specific time or place'.

In recent years artist have been making comebacks, polishing past glories. Reminding everyone how they got so famous. But Cosey Fanni Tutti has neither the luxury or inclination to do so. She is, as ever, a titillator and a pusher of buttons. Like 2016's Blackstar, this is as much a reinvention as a retrospective. With any luck, Cosey will continue to wreck civilisation for some time to come.

Jenny Hval’s Blood Bitch has some nice homages to Cosey’s first solo album. Tutti is available for stream and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Cheryl E. Leonard — Watershed

In Watershed, Cheryl E. Leonard presents three pieces exploring water in its different states. Opener 'Confluences' displays constant movement. Leonard has sourced her sounds from natural objects; so the clunk of wood on stone for percussion mimics a rush of water rattling pebbles. Floating ice tinkling the edge of a glass vocalises the gentle sway of the water around it. And, most impressively, the stream of water hitting a surface is used to produce a tone.

'Frozen Over', as you might expect, seizes this movement to stillness. It is full of loud silences and muffled, unidentifiable sounds. A sense of suffocation lingers in the piece, which touches on our exploitative relationship with the planet. The non-movement is a uncomfortable contrast to 'Confluences'. As 'Frozen Over' continues, it begins to thaw. Bells and gongs are introduced. The piece becomes violent; insistent. Its concern becomes more difficult to ignore.

The final piece, and title track, 'Watershed' adopts quite a different approach. Intended to tell the story of a river from source to mouth, it feels distant and detached. For the first time in Watershed we observe water not from within, but a position of floating omniscience. While it adds interesting variety, this piece sits uncomfortably with its fellows. 'Confluences' and 'Frozen Over' present so strongly as siblings that 'Watershed' ends up feeling like a bonus track.

Watershed is a comprehensive, sonically colourful album. It is like its subject — formless, in a constant state of change and, above all, generous.

For fans of Alvin Curran and Annea Lockwood. Watershed is available for stream and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Gaël Segalen — Sofia Says

Sofia Says opens hokey, with track 'Like Warehouse'. There's a synth tone, highest in the mix, reminiscent of Delia Derbyshire's work for the BBC. Mario Kassar's Terminator soundtrack comes to mind too. It's diabolic and goofy all at once. But within the space of a couple of minutes, it's swamped in abstraction. Fuzz and chaos intrude like radio interference.

It's disorientating -- and as a listener you feel wrongfooted. Gaël Segalen spends the rest of the album giving you this feeling again and again. The changing styles of Sofia Says are restless and eclectic. One second, a chorus of birds is manipulated into a cruel, laughing crowd. Hackings of phlegm seem to punctuate the laughter. The next second, melody emerges from its burrow and the laughter evaporates.

Even at its most transcendental, the music of Sofia Says is dark and ominous. 'Mountain East' begins as what sounds like a discordant video game. The horror of the unseen is invoked; gruesome faces obscured behind 8-bit graphics. A sweet-but-spooky drone provides a texture for this to sit on. It's later supplanted by a beautiful vocal line — but trenchant fear lingers. And the track ends with long, empty silence to fill with anxieties.

The vocals carry through into 'Mountain West', a companion piece to 'East'. They have a devotional quality which, fittingly, produces imagery of height, levitation, floating; the peak of a mountain. And we then descend once again into scraping, chaotic minimalism.

Things get even more disturbing in 'Cortege', whose concrète elements sound like a torture chamber. Metal scrapes over metal in interrupted gasps of what sounds like pain. Surfaces smack and slip. It's the LP's most impermeable piece, and a marks a disturbing high point.

'I'll See You Again', the album's closer, is by contrast very delicate. It's all set around a fragile, wavering drone. An almost angelic noise section draws you in, before tensile cable percussion punches through. A plodding inevitability brings doomy flavour to this track. The gentle drone becomes what sounds like an angry, possessed tremolo violin. Ideas become defined and then decelerate to a stop.

This is an inventive, alien-sounding album. It is in a constant state of flux and reinvention, never settling or assembling; never becoming uninteresting. A tense and exciting listen.

Fans may enjoy the work of SØS Gunver Ryberg. Sofia Says is available to stream and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Benjamin Finger, James Plotkin & Mia Zabelka — Pleasure-Voltage

A shiver of violin rattles the first breath Pleasure-Voltage takes. Drones bob this giggle of strings from below in an unsettling tide. Disjuncture and chaos is audible from the outset.

This kind of chaos can, in the wrong hands, derail a full-length release. Ideas tire and halt in their own destructive paths. Patience is tested. But Benjamin Finger, James Plotkin and Mia Zabelka have here ensured a consistent, considered LP. The disharmony between players, as in any good collaboration, absolutely invigorates their piece.

Their singular approaches entwine into one cavernous soundscape. It is as though each musician has been given free range within their set frequencies. The sound is, as a result, lush and full. Outside of guitar maestro Fennesz, it's rare to hear so few people sound this vast. The image of an orchestra materialises, despite this music sounding nothing like one.

So what does it sound like? Pleasure-Voltage is nigh-impossible to pin down, speaking in a language of contradictions.

There is an impalpable Baltic quality to it -- albeit with a 'Dead Flag Blues' twist of Americana. Resemblance to Edward Artemiev's scores for Tarkovsky must bear partial responsibility. Both works float in a liminal space; between knowing and unknowing. Familiar sounds and organic instrumentation struggle for dominance, battling synthesis; industrial, atonal abstraction.

Similar techniques mark Leyland Kirby's tremendous ongoing series, Everywhere at the end of time. Musical ideas and short phrases are introduced, then seconds later obliterated. You scrabble for what's underneath, below the layers of disorder. Snatches of speech and melody tease the ears. More so than a composition, Pleasure-Voltage sounds like the disassembly of a piece.

But where Kirby's work (intentionally) stretches time to an agonising length, Pleasure-Voltage compresses it. Later stages of Everywhere at the end of time feel purgatorial. Pleasure-Voltage is a short wave of panic; a coming-on and a going. It rockets to life, becomes all-consuming, then, delicate as a moth, it disappears.

The album's careful structure enhances this sensation. Chaotic when close-read, but take a step back. The structural rigour of a more 'ordered' LP reveals itself as Pleasure-Voltage's glue. And this is what prevents chaos becoming tiresome: care. Care buoys every individual second of this piece -- and blankets the whole, too. A wonderful listening experience.

Fans may enjoy Fennesz, Grouper, Edward Artemiev and The Caretaker. Pleasure-Voltage is available for streaming and purchase here.

Maria Fusco — ECZEMA!

Maria Fusco’s ECZEMA! is confrontational and forthright. The first thing we hear is a man's voice, bathed in lush reverb. It sounds like the inter-hymn mumblings of an episode of Songs of Praise. We're transported into a cavernous cathedral; nudged into an involuntary live experience.

Fusco's decision to hand her words over to a male performer is mysterious — but her words are anything but. Over a half hour of captivating music she bares herself completely. It may seem a flippant subject, but Fusco ensures a comprehensive and deadly serious exploration of eczema here.

Music is so often permitted to explore the travails of mental health but, short of outliers like Ian Dury and the Blockheads, not its physical side. Here Fusco blends the two areas with skill. Itching is framed as a compulsive, even erotic act. Our performer describes the urge to 'rasp the tender places'. It's transgressive, private, and 'ravishing'.

But the physical cost is made clear too - Fusco paints herself as a grotesque Frankenstein's monster. Hard, drifting platelets that adhere to bedsheets. She refers to herself as having 'elephant, donkey' skin and emphasises the thoughtless perfection of others'.

She also grants her body a hieroglyphic power. The psychogeography of scar tissue. Fusco says of her scars they 'remember what I cannot'. We become aware of her burden. With eczema you carry the marks of your compulsion around. You wear your shame on your skin. And it literally keeps you up at night. A powerful, physical release.

Those drawn to extended spoken word explorations situated in avant-garde instrumentation will enjoy Cosey Fanni Tutti’s Time to Tell. ECZEMA! is available to stream and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe