Originally
published on isnotwas.com
The London-based drum ‘n’
bass boys John Coxon and Ashley Wales (aka Spring Heel Jack) have
been staying plenty busy. Their album Treader was released to
good reviews early last year, and they've just released an EP
with Low, “Bombscare,” which also garnered critical
acclaim. And now Disappeared appears.
This new disc opens with some almighty banging and clanging in
the form of “Rachel Point,” a single you could quite
effectively to wake yourself up with in the morning. It sounds
like short bursts of cannon fire followed by something like God
playing his great xylophone in the sky. Then a muted trumpet sneaks
in, and the whole thing starts sounded sinuous and more than little
sneaky. There’s some martial drumming and screeching interference
thrown in for good measure, too. This sucker careens along like
a Mack truck laden down with broken-up asphalt headed the wrong
way down a one-way street. And it sounds great all the way.
Disappeared is a muscular album. “Mit
Wut” (German for “With Fury”) begins with what
sounds kinda plaintive whale calls, but they’re soon muffled
by down-n-dirty beats, which are in turn strangled by some wiry
electric guitar. There’s definitely a hard industrial edge
to tracks like these first two and the longest track, “Galina.”
On “Disappeared 1,” Coxon and
Wales reveal that the “bass” in drum ‘n’
bass also means bass clarinet, and this may be the only drum ‘n’
bass release to feature that instrument this year. The clarinet
sounds lovely in a melancholy sorta way. It’s intermittently
interrupted by what sounds like a litter of muted, whinging kittens.
This ain’t drum ‘n’ bass anymore; it’s
avant-garde jazz.
Other instruments wander into the mix on
this disc, too, trumpets particularly and some percussion that
sounds like a bunch of people clapping vinyl-soled shoes on a
gym floor. Here and there, the music even has an Underworldish
quality to it—especially “Bane,” a great track,
whose guitar loop, sounds like it was practically lifted from
Underworld’s Second Toughest In The Infants album.
Spring Heel Jack are always being
told their music sounds like a soundtrack to a spy movie. So could
Disappeared be the soundtrack to a lost James Bond flick? Well,
it could be if Bond were still a 6’4” manly man instead
of that slender sapling of a bloke, Pierce Brosnan. This is James
Bond if he drank black coffee, smoked cheap cigars and did Quaaludes
when there were no ladies to be found. This is Sean Connery with
an earring, a coupla tatts sleeving his arms and a few shots of
tequila under his belt.
Rating: 8/10
Robert Stribley
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