VARIOUS ARTISTS – ‘SPECTRUM’
A prime mover in the resurgence of cassette culture, Newcastle-based imprint Cruel Nature boasts a catalogue of near unrivalled sonic eclecticism and its commitment to championing outsider music is nowhere better exemplified than on ‘Spectrum’, a gem-studded 23-track anthology compiled to mark the label’s 10th anniversary. Featuring artists drawn from an enviably deep talent pool and sequenced like the tasting menu of a cutting-edge restaurant, the album bodyswerves through a plethora of contrasting styles without once losing focus, highlights arriving thick and fast throughout its marathon 110-minute runtime. In the banger camp, VHS¥DEATH’S ‘Sacrifice’ is a hard-charging, Berghain-ready headrush, whilst the vertiginous ‘Nu-shunting’ by GK favourites Whirling Hall Of Knives, splits industrial techno’s atom sending quarks and gluons of percussive fallout skittering across the dancefloor. Otherworldliness abounds here too. The Durutti Column-gone-slowcore filigree of Charlie Butler’s sepia-tinted ‘Eagle’s Splendour’ is a transport of introspective delight but Dublin-based experimentalist Katie Gerardine O’Neill steals the strangeness show and then some with ‘Along The Shoreline’, a mind-warping odyssey into deconstructed chamber jazz that dazes and confuses in equally large measure. Elsewhere though, far darker forces are at work. ‘I Have Cherished Our Season Of Friendship’ from Esmé Lousie Newman’s Petrine Cross project is doom-laden ambient black metal at its most balefully cinematic and if blunt force trauma lights your candle, Lovely Wife’s bass-heavy sludge blowout ‘Letting Go’ delivers its payload with all the subtlety of a backstreet kneecapping. Packed sardine-tight with brilliance, and with all profits going to youth autism charity The Toby Henderson Trust, ‘Spectrum’ offers an unmissable glimpse into Cruel Nature’s singular soundworld. Here’s to the next 10 years.
GonzoKaraoke 