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SJ, "Threnody for the Victims of Ignorance"
On this small CDR run, the long standing power electronics duo of Kevin Tomkins and Paul Taylor (better known as Sutcliffe Jugend) re-reinvent themselves after the more experimental Between Silences album. While that release consisted of multiple, subtle shorter tracks, this disc is only five songs, bookended by two massive pieces, and calls to mind the ferocity of their older work as Sutcliffe Jugend.
The disc opens with the 24+ minute title track, faint children’s voices and rather conventional guitar (not unlike the Taylor/Tomkins “rock” band Bodychoke) are introduced before the rise of processed guitar noise that’s not really harsh, but certainly not ambient. Then a switch to feedback drone and children singing what amounts to an atheist hymn (“They think they are forgiven/but everybody knows/There is no God in heaven/There is no depth below”) before the noise kicks back in. It never quite reaches the same intensity as their late '90s albums on Cold Meat Industries, but has a great deal more texture and depth. The near 10 minute "Termites Building A Tower to Infiltrate Heaven" is a much more restrained affair, feedback and violin scrapes slowly build up over time then drop off to a quiet finish.
"Obliterating Ego" is a short solo piece of abrasive electronics by Paul Taylor. It's a track closer to the sound of their older days than anything else on here, while "Her Favorite Distance was that Between a Cough and a Dying Horse" is the opposite: a very restrained piece of cut up and highly processed vocal samples from Tomkins. The disc closes with "Waves of Relentless Indifference," a 25-minute drone of piano, violin and guitar which catches a multitude of varying textures in between, similar to the occasional snippets of almost film like music SJ would put on their previous albums. This is all packaged in a lovely minimal gatefold card wallet with an insert of artwork. A very different from their previous body of work, but no less compelling, it shows that even some 27 years since they started, Kevin Tomkins and Paul Taylor continue to experiment and try new things.
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