Helm – Silencer EP (PAN 43)

Eldritch electro-acoustic explorer and uncompromising sound artist Luke Younger aka Helm presents his first new material since casting the subterranean concrète psychedelia of his ‘Impossible Symmetry’ album for PAN across end-of-year lists in 2012 and petrifying numerable witnesses to his granite-hewn live set.

Issued as a split release between PAN and his own Alter label, ‘Silencer’ documents four studio actions conducted in the wake of his renowned LP, charting the alchemical relationships between base, stripped down rhythms, cruddy electronics and acousmatic source material manipulated on cassette tapes. The magic of these four tracks lies in the curious sense of detachment and friction between those fractured, awkwardly reactive elements, klanging flinty drums against detuned, cryptic synth scrabble and buckled tape FX to create charged and metaphysically affective atmospheres intended to corrode and infect your listening space.

The title track follows a tumbling line of inquiry between primal percussive clatter and salted, scratching synth drones into the boggy, noxious ambience and quaking bass slap of ‘Mirrored Palms’, which features a desolate, sustained peal of foghorn brass from John Hannon of Liberez. In the tunnel of ‘Bergamo’, effluent rhythms and vapourous brown gases deliver a cold, claggy soundsphere, with Barrow-based multi-instrumentalist Tom James Scott contributing metallic scrape to the para-dimensional murk and insectoid shivers of ‘The Haze’.

The 12″ is mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy. It is pressed on 140g clear vinyl which itself is housed in a silk screened pvc sleeve with artwork by Bill Kouligas.