- In a sense Rainer Veil's debut was a perfect fit for Modern Love. Here was a record that, like Demdike Stare's Test Pressings series or Andy Stott at his most ethereal, seemed to treat dance forms like mournful echoes from a distant past. But the Struck EP, while as bleak as any Modern Love release, was much poppier; in their vocal moments you could almost imagine the duo as a grim Mancunian answer to Mount Kimbie. Unfortunately the results too often felt like so much aimless impressionism, an adequate but uninspiring synthesis of several familiar styles and approaches.
One year on, Rainer Veil return with another lengthy EP. The press release for New Brutalism describes it as espousing "a distinctly Northern British Weltanschauung (worldview), a joyous revelling in melancholy that goes as far back as the earliest dances documented in Mark Leckey's 'Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore.'" It's a nice idea, but once again such melancholy could just as easily be compared to the morose post-dubstep set. Much of the EP trades in a hiss-strewn garage shuffle not so distant from a thousand Burial clones. "Strangers" has a glimmer of tenderness, but otherwise these tracks are greyscale to the point of dullness.
Elsewhere things are spiced up by some ghoulish takes on jungle. "UK Will Not Survive" is the best thing here, managing to wring a convincing drama from its tricksy syncopations. "Three Day Jag" is the rolling textures of A Guy Called Gerald's Black Secret Technology as played to an abandoned swimming pool—though some clumsy breakbeat spurts in the latter half upset the mood. Ultimately, as with Struck before it, the co-ordinates of this EP are all very familiar.
Tracklist01. UK Will Not Survive
02. Negative Space
03. Three Day Jag
04. Strangers
05. Run Out