It’s no surprise that the latest release by Chris Douglas as Dalglish explores a dark, broken and danceless post-Techno world crushed into chaotic fizzing shards, Douglas having been ensconced in Techno since its Detroit beginnings. His early productions as O.S.T. were made under the auspices of Mad Mike Banks, with later interactions with Kit Clayton and Autechre leading to more fragmented experiments. What we hear on Bennacah Drann however is a work unto itself. Wise too that it’s released by Highpoint Lowlife, bastion of cracked Electronica of this unclassifiable sort, although its sad to hear of the label’s imminent demise.
The most likely referent here is the recent work of Sebastien Meissner’s Klimek, particularly his superb Movies Is Magic, although Bennacah Drann hardly sounds like it. Rather there’s a similar desire to twist sound into emotional knots, wrestling faint dance motifs – spiralling bleeps, soaring white noise, thick walls of bass – to the ground, knocking them senseless then focusing on the spinning stars. In opener ‘25.6.2010’ (all tracks appear as dates) a vague accordion wheeze peeks through Lynchian synth pads, velvet meshed with gravel, while ‘8.4.2006’ swirls tin cans, synth buzz and howling wind into a dusty mess, keeping time with the clank of a weathervane. ‘3.9.2004’ explores the skeletons of Jungle, choked with rust and distortion, and ‘5.8.2001’ drowns us in crushing white noise dumpers. The final ‘6.8.2002’ strips things back to reveal the sparse growl of a lone beast, accompanied by disembodied machine tones, the dying sounds of a likely post-apocalyptic future. Post-Techno indeed.
Joshua Meggitt
