An audio/visual/all sorts collaboration: indeed, SNOWBLIND refers to a game and whole piece rather than the individual tracks – this is crunching electronica with take no prisoners beats but the most ethereal of wobbliness going on all around.
Otherworldly and indeed creating a snowy hinterland it’s eerie stuff; though at the same time oddly comforting; like a loving embrace whilst looking out over winter vista onto a dark and icy metropolis… where doings are afoot.
Enough of that pretension: this is plain excellent: new artists to me, shamefully, and it’s inventive, vivid, complex and lush.
A project involving Glasgow’s own WOLF and Gallic femme PHOENE the two tracks are sometimes a little reminiscent of Mondkopf though not quite as dystopian and gloomy; there’s a gentle beauty amidst the rolling atmospherics and jolts.
The sonics accompany a mini adventure game by frd and if that’s your bag it’s a simple yet curiously compelling little affair: one suspects that innovative collaborations such as this will become more the norm, however for the vaguely Luddite amongst us – hi! – the really rather marvellous music is the main event.
A double AA – ‘The Last Fall’ by WOLF and ‘A Day For the Brave’ by PHOENE: across the whole, even without the visuals to play around with, pictures are conjured up by the snapshots of vocals delivered almost out of earshot and tingles, synthetic groans and drones and occasional smashing and jarring future beats: at times the Scottish input is like the Cocteau Twins had they signed to Warp for a bit; the French connection providing more juddering power on the other side.
Chilling – but of course – spine tingling in fact and some of the most fascinating, complicated and appealing music I’ve heard of late; modernity and brute force locked together with the the lightest of touches; some waterfall keyboards next to the spectre of a frozen, metallic, musical spider about to pounce.
I should probably keep my imagination in check – or start making incomprehensible videos immediately.
If this is the future, bring it on: it certainly sounds it.
Words: Andrew Morrison
