by Oliver on March 31, 2024 in Album
Thou are finally approaching the long-awaited successor to their 2018 monolith Magusbut guitarist Andy Gibbs still has time before that to start his solo project Supplicate by means of Skulk to reinvent a lot.
Conceptually conceptualized by Gibbs perhaps originally somewhat strikingly as “music to do crime at night to“The man from New Orleans took it with him Skulk ultimately leading to a far more personal, emotional work beyond the purely aesthetic vision. An intimacy that in many places makes no secret of fragile, vulnerable shades (both musical and lyrical), whose superficially expressionistic features radiate both inwardly and outward across many layers, operating imaginatively and physically.
The “dark beats for deep nights“ von Sulk Stylistically it has become a much darker and heavier readjustment for Supplicate: the difference in the choice of artwork alone is the dark, shadowy urbanity compared to Blush from last year adequately marks this development.
On another level, the fact how natural the oppressive worlds between ambient and electronic are similarly exemplary Supplicate now captivates her: Skulk The only thing I have to accept is the accusation that, despite its homogeneous atmosphere, it consists of eight individual pieces that are often kept almost too compact (where sequencing with a more seamless flow that flows into one another would probably have even intensified the effect of the record, which is nevertheless so densely knit?) .
Either way, the scenic approach works like a kaleidoscope, which, due to its fundamentally reduced color variability, does not fall into a dreary uniformity and ultimately has a not entirely exhaustive addictive potential.
Martial, but with a fascinatingly mystical flicker, whose melodic subtext has something intangibly attractive, flies V2K as a sinister dark ambient, less oppressive and more spiritual about the ethereal fog of a post-apocalyptic city. The minimalist electric drums, crackling with distortion, drive in pitched frequency, and although theoretically it booms and screams, Gibbs already creates a stellar warmth here, spherically evocatively engaging – like a Blade Runner-Nightmare as a strangely catchy comfort zone.
In The Penrose Stairs he shifts his modulated anachronisms into dystopian spaces, creating a shadowy, impressively monolithic foreboding, while blurred guitars and the vocals, elegiacally transported into the reverb, distort the pulsating Ethereal Wave club music. After almost five minutes of play, however, you get the feeling that The Penrose Stairs (quite exemplary, but more than most of the other songs on the record) is only at its finale where the song can really open up and lay into itself – instead of having reached its too abrupt end.
In Ultrazone a subcutaneously attenuated industrial rushes onto the hallucinogenic dance floor and Barrier Aggression meditates to dominant percussion like a disturbing dungeon loading screen. Guitars and vocals meander for Closed Sys through a goth-like trance and celebrate the melody as transience in the reverb, meanwhile seduced by friend Robin Wattie Watchword in Drone, complete with The Body attitude and slow-motion beats, could represent a kind of sexual breathing exercise with a gas mask.
Suburban Spells glows astrally like a shoegaze score for space after and Anvil Heart assimilates trip hop behavior patterns with a motor-slow sing-song. In terms of composition and staging, it’s all well-founded and is probably an early genre highlight of the year, although given how sure-footed it is, one sometimes even thinks that Gibbs could throw himself even more confidently into the cosmos he’s created in the future. But the real highlight is always the atmosphere created Skulk created holistically. Perhaps this paradigm shift is the yin that precedes the supposedly very purified and direct approach Thou-Which?
Skulk von Supplicate
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