- Nimble post-Burial dance floor weapons.
- Josh Quirke's debut, a four-track EP called Acid Beth on Young Turks, was informed by the repetitive rhythms made by machines at his day job as a carpenter. The producer, who's also released EPs on Whities, once described his working method—recording sounds from his workplace, then building chord progressions around them—as "a very inhumane way of thinking about music that is made by a human." That Quirke's first album, Steal A Golden Hail, opens with the gentle thuds of a heartbeart suggests that this record might take a more human turn, albeit one that isn't necessarily familiar. The album's Bandcamp listing is accompanied by a mysterious conversation between two unnamed individuals about the "mind's measuring instrument."
Talking to Pitchfork, Quirke brought up his older brother, who used to collect old flyers from '90s warehouse parties he'd gone to; Quirke was too young to go with him. "I think it was better in some ways to have this distance," he said. "It allowed me to paint an image in my head, which was better than the rave itself, because there was no limits to it."Steal A Golden Hail dips into the hardcore continuum, but in a restrained, disconnected way. Like Burial, Quirke seems to prefer to work semi-anonymously and in isolation, and his music similarly buries ideas beneath Bevan-esque layers. Trance melodies, for example, are submerged under white noise scratches on "Se Seven 7S," while lasers and warp-speed Amen breaks are underpinned by misty ambience on "Sample Devon."
The record excels in its use of scatterbrain textures and uneven composition. On "Sample Devon," a clattering Squarepusher-esque drum blitz peters out into ambient whispers. "Spinhaunt Coil," the record's closer, is full-on rave euphoria, lightning flashes of breakbeat cut into soaring melodies. Though the album at times recalls the sci-fi landscapes of Skee Mask's Compro, the grainy collages of Actress and AFXian ambient, Quirke carves out a space through these styles that feels uniquely his. A perfect inverse of brash genres like EDM, the music on Steal A Golden Hail dances nimbly between being calm and frantic.
Tracklist01. Luxury Red Pence
02. Se Seven 7S
03. Sample Devon
04. Fluorescent Phlegm
05. Xultext Cradle
06. Suction Fax
07. Maybe Again, Crawl Through
08. Spinhaunt Coil