- Russell Haswell only yielded to the tyranny of the drumbeat a few years back. 2014's 37 Minute Workout and 2015's As Sure As Night Follows Day, both for Diagonal, were sprawling and exploratory, as if he was mapping out the techno space one white noise shriek at a time. By comparison, his latest EP for the label is short and sharp, and arranged almost like a conventional dance record. There are a couple of straighter club tracks, some tricksy interludes and an extended vocal number to round things off.
Only, this being Haswell, the club bangers are strange. The convulsive "First In Man (Williams Mix)" and the slamming "Let Suffering Become You" are awkwardly minimal accretions of blunt drums and raw-concrete synths. The latter track opens with a sample of Jonathan Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne, complaining that punk fans "would really like to be back in those days when they could actually see physical people hacking each other to death."
The not-quite-dance interludes aren't moments of downtime but a cold slap to the face. The latter of the two, the rhythmic noise rager "Worsening Daily," is the EP's screwface moment. The vocal track is completely bizarre, a ten-minute string of spiky rhythms over which Sue Tompkins, once of the indie band Life Without Buildings, improvises yelps and whoops and sing-song non sequiturs. ("But I never thought… Luxury? Let it pick you up!") It's a deeply unsettling duet, which I guess is exactly how Haswell intended it.
Tracklist01. The Surface Is Unrevealing
02. First In Man (Williams Mix)
03. Worsening Daily
04. Special Long Version (Demo) feat. Sue Tompkins
05. Let Suffering Become You