Hissing Tiles — Boychoir

Hissing Tiles' Boychoir sounds like the horror punk cousin of Scott Walker's Bish Bosch. It's chock-full of experimentation and vocal eccentricity. Barer than any of Walker's work, it replaces lush string arrangements with angular guitar melodies and fizzes of noise.

The melodies themselves are catchy in an unhinged, Mr Bungle-esque way. They transport you to the coconut shie of some nightmarish carnival. 'Nightflood' contains a phrase that sounds like chattering dolphins, or shoes slipping on wet lino. But the release isn't whacked-out or impenetrable. Any experimentation is in service of the text, and incorporated elegantly.

Boychoir makes some valiant stabs at discussing gender politics and gender policing. Masculinity is positioned as an intrusive presence in an otherwise balanced world. It's an obligation to be fulfilled, a role to play. And when masculinity arrives, it carries all its associated language and horrors. It must be with some self-consciousnesses the artists chose a rock group — one of the most stereotypically masculine forms — to try and undermine such roles. Though their explorations are all too welcome, unconventional and well-considered for this to work against them.

This is a release which probes into uncomfortable areas and asks difficult questions. It's supported by bizarre noise elements and spirited performances from every member of the band. More than worth its weight in time, this should earn a few spins from any listener.

Boychoir is available for pre-order here. You can also stream the album’s first single.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Burial — Claustro / State Forest

Since the release of Rival Dealer in 2013, Burial's style has become hard to pin down. The producer's first few releases consisted of straightforward but catchy garage tracks, underpinned by a sorrowful and ghostly ambience. Since then, Burial seemed to lighten the general mood of his bangers, dialling up the cheese and relegating ambience to its own corner.

But these ambient tracks, once treated by the producer as interludes, lengthened and multiplied. Beats either sparsened or disappeared completely. Melodies dissolved into a wash of sound collage and field recording. Burial's distinctive sound had become fragmented, split down the middle.

Claustro / State Forest feels like an acknowledgement of this change — divided, as it is, between two markedly different sides. ‘Claustro’ is perhaps the most uptempo track Burial has produced; ‘State Forest’ the most languorous. But these two tracks feel like very estranged siblings. One is chirpy, the other dour and dry.

The vocal sample in ‘Claustro’ is lazy and irritating — not as deft in deployment as anything on Untrue. And maybe I’m missing something, but ‘State Forest’ just sounds like Burial paulstretched one of his own tracks.

Sadly, in continuing the disassembly of an iconic sound, this release proves that Burial's early work was greater than the sum of its parts.

Claustro / State Forest is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Trupa Trupa — Remainder

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski of Trupa Trupa made a startling discovery in 2015. In a pine forest, nuzzled next to the former Stutthof concentration camp in Poland, was a cache of buried shoes.

In modern Poland it is an offence to accuse national authorities or Polish citizens of having a role in the extermination of the Jews. But the thousands of shoes Kwiatkowski found buried there tell a different story altogether. A perfect representation, he argues, of Poland's reticence to exhume the past, or to examine their own place in it.

There is, of course, a fine line to be drawn here. Nazism was not a fun, opt-in summer camp of a regime. But it was built on a house of cards; a precarious structure of individuals denying responsibility. Without this desire to look away, to cover the ugly with earth, it could not have succeeded. And this desire has followed Poland like a spectre into the modern day.

On 'Remainder', Trupa Trupa's new single, Kwiatkowski and co. rail against Holocaust deniers with typical style. The track recalls The Cure's Pornography; it fills you with nervous kinetic energy, while at the same time crushing and nailing you in place. The coldness and warmth of a harsh truth.

Trupa Trupa are not interested in psychoanalysing Holocaust deniers. It is a position much too confusing and complicated to do any justice to in three minutes. Instead, they parody the seductive, simplistic rhetoric of conspiracy theorists, chanting 'It did not take place' over and over like a mantra. To say the effect is disturbing is an understatement.

The strength of this track is that, while it adopts a minimal approach to its topic, it feels clear, cogent and forthright. The past may be a dark and frightening place. But the future is looking brighter courtesy of Trupa Trupa's LP Of the Sun, due this September.

‘Remainder’ is available for purchase from Boomkat here. Alternatively, it’s up on youtube here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe