The Answer Is In The Beat

The Stranger: Watching Dead Empires In Decay (Modern Love, 2013)

September 22, 2013 at 9:43 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Leyland Kirby is a true hero of mine, from his pig-masked days as noise-pop terrorist V/Vm, running the pioneering V/Vm Test Records label, to his Lynchian recordings as The Caretaker, to his dark ambient works under his own name, and everything in between. The Stranger is one of his longest-running aliases (having released a limited CDr on Phthalo back in 1997), but this is only the third release under that alias. This (as far as I know) is Kirby’s first release on Modern Love, and he’s such a perfect fit on that label, considering how much of a debt artists like Demdike Stare owe to him. This is a suitably dim-lit album of dark, sometimes-rhythmic atmospherics, with clanging bells and soft beats anchoring the way on tracks like “So Pale It Shone In The Night”. “Spiral Of Decline” is the closest the album comes to a straight 4/4 beat, but you’d be hard-pressed to call it “techno”. “We Scarcely See Sunlight” has slowly tolling metallic percussion and sickly-sounding bowed instruments moaning away in the background. “Providence Or Fate” has darkly pounding drums and crackly synth-strings for a kind of poignant cinematic feel, albeit a film that’s decaying and distorted. “Where Are Our Monsters Now, Where Are Our Friends?” has a slow, mutated drum machine beat and curdled synth melodies, which sounds a bit like a cousin of V/Vm’s infamous butchering of Chris De Burgh’s “Lady In Red”. If you’re familiar with that V/Vm track, this will be a delightful flashback to that period of Kirby’s musical career, but it’s still something new and fresh and forward-looking (however wearily so). The album ends appropriately with the eerie drift of “About To Enter A Strange New Period”, which seems like a fitting proclamation for what could be a bold new era for Leyland Kirby’s always-captivating music.