Further Ambivalent Tendencies

London’s filthiest return with another instalment of frightmare music to satiate that post-Deviant Species part of your brain that eternally hankers after Balojax. Or something. Serious Porn Collector kicks off with Bloodlines, a fiendishly slutty piece of dark can-we-call-it-prog with warped vocals and a creeping, seeping vibe that sounds like a paedophile stalking your children on their way home from school. Squid Inc gets the ball rolling some more with Tilt, a huge-sounding eighteen-wheeler with more balls than Fifa, and a nice little main run that tightens its grip on you every step of the way. Squid Inc’s remix of Scorb’s Rave From The Grave is a good bit of shuffled, quantized trance in that 4/3 (or whatever it is) timing, holding the pace nicely.

Scorb reappears with Deviant Species on Jack The Kipper, every bit as mesmerising as the collaboration promises. It’s menacing, it’s atmospheric, it’s funky, it’s funny – in short, it has everything. NRS’s Knocked Out Goner is a little less focussed than his best stuff; this sort of ambles its way along and despite some nice twists it’s largely ground he’s trodden better before. Scorb’s Resonant Evil is a cracker – utterly sublime, I defy anyone not to like this. It’s proof that you don’t need to redline everything in order to have good, scary music: less is more, and this brooding bit of atmospheric psychedelia is sheer bliss. D

eviant Species’ Iophant is another corker, with plenty of movement in the sounds and an overall heads-down feel. Your incredible-music-meter will peak with RAM’s Cole’s Law (DJ Yod remix), another glimpse of just how well Scorb and NRS collaborate together. This is a gem – it escalates perfectly, it has those tweaks and twists you expect from RAM, and the atmosphere throughout is pleasingly lo-fi. Like good punk, basically. And then, finally, there’s the rather special Centrifuge from Orzels Machine. No idea who this is (this promo was a CDR with the track names sellotaped to the back of the jiffybag) but I love them like brothers (or sisters). It’s like tecchy prog-on, with some dark murmurs in the background and some Freq-like playfulness in the foreground. With Eat Static-y stabs, atonal piques, zero reliance on trance cliché and a bloody nice bloody overall bloody sound, it’s something definitely worth writing home about.

Not a classic album, but some very worthy moments indeed.