- Few partnerships make as much sense as that of Mark Broom and James Ruskin. In early 2010, the No Time Soon EP saw the latter's introverted weirdness mixed with the former's dubby synth work in storming fashion to end up somewhere near the heady blue-black of their mates Sandwell District's Feed Forward, but in a more functional dance floor workout sense. Here, they've headed further into the insane, nightmarish depths of hell. In each track, cavernous, rumbling sub bass and charging kicks support a single nasty, twisted specimen above which repeats its demonic way throughout.
Although this thread connects the tracks in a way that makes sense, they have distinct characters. The line in the A side is a frantic, puppet master-esque confusion; "The Future That Was" has triplets of that hollow pipe hitting sound from Sandwell's "Hunting Lodge," and rising strings, and "Black Lines" (my personal favourite for its supremely tweaked-out funkiness) gyrates with snaking acid whose squelch surfaces only occasionally. Rather than the pair coming to common ground as they did in No Time Soon, the more extreme parts of their personalities seem to have been accentuated: Ruskin's twisted headfuck, and Mark Broom's weighty loading of the spectrum. The result is imposing, tracks which make sense best in massive rooms.
Tracklist A Erotic Misery
B1 The Future That Was
B2 Black Lines