Autumns
Through the Construction of Grace
Ransom Note Records
In the roughly ten years or so we’ve been covering Irish producer Christian Donaghey, we’ve never been able to pigeon-hole their Autumns project. The mixture of post-punk, body music, industrial, cut-up sound and inumerable other genres that have informed their various EPs and LPs has always been mutable, and there’s essentially no guarantee that any given Autumns record will sound like a previous one, or any future one for that matter. Their EP for Ransome Note Records Through the Construction of Grace doesn’t break with that tradition, ushering in a groovy, rhythm oriented take of Autumns’ sound, which while reminiscent of Tackhead in spurts, but replete with Donaghey’s own production sensibility. “Taste for Someone” mixes up layers of hand drums and other percussion sounds, its filtered bass sound and layers of reverb giving it a dubby bounce. “Trolley Coin” goes in on a classic drum machine groove, maintaining the ghostly vocal style from the opener, the particulars of its delays acting as a rhythmic counterpoint to its head-nodding tempo. “Make Sure to Swallow” splits the difference, as metallic drum hits trade-off with organic drum hits behind a singularly funky bassline, menacing and danceable in equal measure.


Jimmy Svensson
För den som slutat tro på människor
self-released
We were under no illusions that the shuttering of Swedish producer Jimmy Svensson’s EBM-focused Nuclear Sludge project would be the last we’d hear from him; between his work with experimental duo Alvar and a plethora of preceding noise projects he didn’t seem likely to stay quiet for long. But the about face he’s made with a plethora of releases under his own name has been striking, with a considered and mournful read on industrial noise which is well represented on this new EP. Made up of slowly shifting, grimily textured tones and drones punctuated by drifts of static and distorted samples, each of the three pieces here is decidedly minimal and improvisational in structure, yet feels more grounded and less spacey than last year’s enjoyable Beyond The Black LP, perhaps in part to how proximal and organic the hums and buzzes which sit below contemplative and oddly emotive sine waves on the titular opener. Ambient and industrial but neither dark ambient nor ritual industrial, it’s a listen that’s alternately anaesthetizing and agitating, almost like an alternate take on the sort of landscapes carved out by fellow Alvar collaborator Fredrik Djurfeldt (Severe Illusion, Analfabetism), one comprised of cinematic subterranean shifts rather than surface-level confrontation. Things have been so sanguine despite the ostensible atonality and ‘noise’ that when final track “Efter Maskerna Fallit” erupts into klaxon attacks it’s as if you’re being punished for allowing yourself to be lulled into complacency.