- In 2015, around the time Unknown Precept released his Extremities 12-inch, Noah Anthony overhauled his setup. Having grown listless with a live show where he stood still, head down, before a table smothered in electronic components, synths and tapes, he wanted to be a more physical and dynamic performer, and sought a sound to match. This entailed adding bass, guitar and live percussion. He also opened his Profligate alias to collaboration, enlisting the Los Angeles-based poet and singer Elaine Kahn (who appeared on "Black Plate" and "Needle In Your Lip") and the vocalist Chrissy Jones (who wrote the forebodingly enigmatic lyrics on "A Circle Of"). The results initially surfaced on two self-released collections, Abbreviated Regime Volume One and a rarer, tour-only second volume. It's from these that Wharf Cat Records compiled Somewhere Else, a distillation of those tapes' deepest and most expressive moments into a single album that flows sublimely.
Anthony is no stranger to live instruments. (He used them extensively in his old band, Social Junk.) On Somewhere Else, he attempts to inject Profligate's mix of industrial pop and dark wave with the loose, almost chaotic rhythms for which Social Junk were beloved. A telling example is the nervously snaking bassline—equal parts Gang Of Four's agit-funk and Harry Nilsson's "Jump Into The Fire"—that coils itself around the collection's most propulsive song, "Enlist." There's also the manically repetitive snare drum of "A Circle Of," refusing to let the song blossom into the swelling gothic dreamscape it so obviously wants to become.
Anthony doesn't seem terribly concerned with weaving these instruments and textures into a single, unified sound. The emotional turmoil coursing through these lost, desperate songs—"Needle In Your Lip," for example, is pure creeping inertia—achieve their emotional power precisely because his stitching is so jagged and sloppy. In the closing minutes of "Lose A Little," smoothly murmuring bass and wheezing synths dissolve into cruddy Walkman crackle and spoken word from Kahn, whose seething and distressed last line—"Fucking nature / you delight in getting rid of me"—sounds like a transmission from an abyss into which she's all too willing to descend. In these palpable clashes of sound sources, it's as though parallel universes are collapsing in on one another.
Somewhere Else largely steps away from the dance floor punch powering Profligate's last handful of releases. But, like its predecessors, it pushes songs forms rooted in industrial (and to a lesser degree minimal wave and synth pop) to the brink of recognizability. This is especially vital at a time when too many artists operating in these zones are leaning heavily on nostalgic tropes. When you hear bands like Lust For Youth or Hide, it's hard to determine if they're from the '10s or the '80s. But when it comes to Profligate, there's no mistaking his era. This is bold, underground sound with a contemporary bite.
Tracklist01. Somewhere Else
02. A Circle
03. Enlist
04. Lose A Little
05. Black Plate
06. Jet Black (King Of The World)
07. Needle In Your Lip