UK-based experimental electronic duo The Truth About Frank first emerged back in 2008 with their debut EP ‘A Briefcase Full Of Suspicion’, and this debut album ‘Cannibal Work Ethic’ arrives on the heels of last year’s Murder Sleep’ EP. In terms of discernible style, it’s actually pretty hard to characterise the eight tracks collected here, with the most obvious predominant themes here being the use of noisy loops and industrial-centred percussion. Opening track ‘Love Is A Cage’ slowly unfurls from the echoing sound of sampled footsteps and murmuring ambient electronics before a muffled voice repeatedly intoning the phrase “love is in us” rises into focus, the relentless flow of grinding looped textures that rolls beneath adding a blurred, hypnotic feel.
By contrast, ‘Chanelling Static’ crashes straight down into muscular looped rock drumming as bursts of shearing distortion and whirring electronic tones rush against the pitch-shifted snare rolls, before ‘A Savage Invitation’ takes things for an ominous wander through slow, stripped-back beats and murmuring, detuned loops that’s easily one of the most spectral moments to be found here, the whisper of what sounds like vocal textures trailing away at the very edges. ‘Swimming Over Mountains’ meanwhile highlights the more subtle and atmospheric side of the duo, slowly building from loops of what sounds like stringed instrumentation and eerie trailing female vocal samples into a wash of gently ebbing hypnotic layers, a vaguely raga-esque drone powering beneath the entire track. A curious collection that’s hard to pigeonhole, ‘Cannibal Work Ethic’ confounds as much as it intrigues.
Chris Downton
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