“A densely emotive album featuring epiphanic narratives in spoken word style, a passionate emphasis on greying grief clothed gently with the underscores of UK Rave, making it a delectable work of art”
Critically devised, oddball satisfier ‘Suitcase In The Water‘ tickles a strange sense of comfort. Plunge head-first with headphones, and the brain stirs with great detail, a Hitchcock-like murder/ mystery grotesque, core melancholia, terrifying as it goes, a delirious calm waiting at the end like an unexpected aftertaste on the tongue, and rotting, ribbon-tied at the bottom, fragile human fate.
For the peculiarly attractive London-based record label Blank Mind, Jacob Dwyer and Sam Purcell join forces to weave together on a long-haul Covid hangover, a densely emotive album featuring epiphanic narratives in spoken word style, a passionate emphasis on greying grief clothed gently with the underscores of UK Rave, making it a delectable work of art.
Pick up the record and a plain white sleeve greets you with stickers placed on it as if without serious intent, one of a murky motorway (The Gravelly Hill Interchange), a Samsonite logo in blue, a human head in orange, and two more. Its rather bleak appearance, the purposeful lack of a dramatic cover, holds intriguing titles ‘Helmet In The Water‘, ‘Stick On Ice‘, ‘Old Guitarist‘, ‘6 AM Sunday 24th January‘, like loose timestamps recorded on a whim. The simplistic detail adds sincere allure to the descriptive text in an ambiguous fashion, suggesting imaginative possibilities.
Unwinding onto its sinister territories, there you have a black-dyed lagoon holding dearly, a helmet with cartoon flames, and an expensive suitcase with puncture holes floating to the surface, a low whimpering of a wounded dog over bird songs at dawn and a mother brings calm to a brain lest-forgotten.
With terror-tinged words that flip the skin, ‘Suitcase In The Water‘ flaunts unusually fragmented anecdotes painted with sensitive synths, dark ambient field recordings, and large rolls of rave-focused drums layered atop provocatively soothing basslines; not one track is a miss. A parting disclaimer for your pleasure: soak it as a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any reality, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
‘Suitcase In The Water’ is scheduled for release on 2nd October via Blank Mind. Order a vinyl copy from Inverted Audio Store.
TRACKLIST
A1. Stick on ice
A2. Helmet in the water
A3. Old guitarist (outside with birds)
A4. Hetty Brain
B1. Suitcase in the water
B2. 6AM (Sunday 24th January)
