Things I'm reminded of when listening
to S.C.U.M's Again Into Eyes - Joy Division,
Gary Numan, Sheep On Drugs, early OMD; when I look at the layered,
intertwined half-naked bodies on the sleeve of the gatefold LP,
I'm reminded of the film adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel
The Informers. In fact I'm reminded of most of Bret Easton
Ellis novels when I look at that sleeve. Plus, for some reason the
pastel colouring reminds me of fruit Mentos.
But those synaptic connections are not intended
to imply that this debut album for Mute makes me
think I've heard (and seen) this all before. Far from it. Again
Into Eyes is a truly original suite of ten tracks, and none
of them sound anything like Joy Division, Gary Numan or Sheep On
Drugs - it's just that I hear an essence of Joy Division's flatline
pulse and restlessness, the robotic detachment of Gary Numan's vocal
entwined with the cynical snarl of Sheep On Drugs' Duncan X / King
Duncan and the synths - especially on the second single 'Whitechapel'
- of OMD. Meanwhile, the effect, the personal impact if you like,
of listening to these obliquely nihilistic tracks is similar to
how listening to Interpol always affects me, namely nudging my mood
in negative directions and making me want to pick up the pieces
of my as-yet-uncompleted novel. But again, S.C.U.M are nothing like
Interpol. They are like S.C.U.M.
Key to the mood here is the grinding, itchy drone-punk
track 'Summon The Sound', which was in circulation much earlier
this year and which featured on the Mute Artists compilation Vorwärts.
'Summon The Sound' is the connective tissue that binds this LP together;
it sent out a very clear signal (pun intended) that S.C.U.M are
anything but cheerful optimists with its beautifully cloying stop-start
rhythm, urgent low-end and mysterious, sneering vocal. Then again,
naming your band after Valerie 'I shot Warhol' Solanis's feminist
manifesto was never likely to produce anything remotely upbeat.
Just a glance at the lyric sheet reveals the elusive, poetic depth
of these songs. The spiky 'Amber Hands', the first single proper
from Again Into Eyes, likewise pointed to a richly bleak
outlook for the album. In fact, it's only the second single 'Whitechapel'
that has anywhere near a sense of positivity attached to it.
Again Into Eyes, metaphorically speaking,
is an album of two sides. The first five tracks are uniformly dark.
'Faith Unfolds' opens with some shimmering, elegiac keyboard patterns
from Bradley Baker - cf OMD's 'Joan Of Arc' / 'Maid
Of Orleans' - which remain throughout the song but soon get subsumed
by whining guitar textures from Samuel Kilcoyne
(son of Add N To (X)'s Barry 7
and also credited with keyboards), Psychocandy drumming
from the elfin Melissa Rigby and a powerful bass
undertow from Huw Webb. Meanwhile vocalist Thomas
Cohen sings an elliptical tale of faith and fate and love.
There's barely a pause before the colour washes away into 'Days
Untrue', all icy synths, twitchy drums and heavily-reverbed vocals.
'Cast Into Season' begins with those 'Joan Of Arc' / 'Maid Of Orleans'
textures and appends cello sounds, 'Atmosphere'-esque funereal drums
and a prominent vocal in the mix from Cohen; it feels like a ritual
or a sacrifice or an alternative soundtrack to Eyes Wide Shut.
Or The Informers' vampiric passages. It's also my favourite
track on Again Into Eyes.
The second half of Again Into Eyes is less
obviously dark, but nevertheless retains a seam of black colour.
'Sentinal Drift' starts with subtle drumming and gentle, polite
synth melodies a laYazoo's Upstairs
At Eric's, but in the end – almost inevitably –
the song becomes dominated by swathes of droning noise and pounded
drums; the brief 'Requiem' may have beautiful piano passages from
Huw Webb, but those notes are submerged under hissing distortion
and reverberating processed noise in the foreground. 'Paris' was
previously available in far simpler form as part of the Signals
series and was originally produced by Gareth Jones.
It is a poignant, reflective ballad – again dominated by Webb's
piano and still containing plenty of gritty noises – which
seems to strain toward the light but alas never quite reaches it.
'I will never bear my skin for you,' sings Cohen in one
of the most evocative lyrics on the album. 'Water', in contrast,
is just harmonically-interwoven droning noise, but it makes complete
sense after the emotional 'Paris'.
Again Into Eyes was produced and mixed by Ken and
Veryon Thomas, with additional mixing by Mute MD Daniel
Miller. Keeping it in the (Mute) family even more, the
album was pre-produced by Jim Sclavunos, he of
recent Bad Seeds / Grinderman
fame.
After a solitary 7" and a trio of country-specific
download-only tracks (the Signals project) over the past
couple of years, S.C.U.M signed to Mute
earlier this year and found their track 'Summon The Sound' featured
alongside other recent signings and Mute stalwarts on the Record
Store Day Vorwärts
compilation. 'Amber Hands' is the first single to be taken from
their debut album Again Into Eyes. 'Amber Hands' was produced
and mixed by Ken and Veryon Thomas, with additional mixing by Mute
head Daniel Miller. The 12" and download come
with mixes from ex-Spacemen Three founder / MGMT producer Sonic
Boom and also from electronic music pioneers Silver Apples.
'Amber Hands' is all thundering drums, hissing percussion,
snarling guitars and vocal bleakness, like recent One Little Indian
signings Wild Palms only with all traces of optimism mixed out of
them. Occasional shivering synth notes add a sense of levity, albeit
briefly - this is a dark, motorik ride, almost sounding like a modern
take on Eighties goth bands like The Cult.
Thomas's production aesthetic gives the track a
clarity which Pete 'Sonic Boom' Kember totally obliterates on his
beautifully fuzzed-up mess of a remix, while Silver Apples add some
typically quirky synth and percussion sounds and get those rolling
drums pushed up more prominently in the mix. Despite the coup of
bagging two esteemed artists to step up for remix duties, neither
quite touch the original in my view.
'Amber Hands' is backed with 'Fountains', an instrumental
track based on layers of ebbing synths and feedback to create an
edgy, cinematically noir-ish dark vignette.
The Matthew Stone-directed video for 'Amber Hands'
can be viewed below.
'Whitechapel' is just about the only song on Again
Into Eyes - the name is derived from a fragmented lyric in
'Whitechapel' - to have what could be loosely described as an 'optimistic'
dimension to it. Its location-derived name suggests that this may
have been the fifth instalment of S.C.U.M's Signals
series, and it also brings to mind the Jack The Ripper murders which
took place in the Whitechapel district of London, but happily the
song is anything but grim: waves of elegiac synths, a bouncy, persistent
rhythm section that's more New Order than Joy Division and a shimmering,
lysergic vocal with lyrics that makes little sense to me. It may
not be the most optimistic song when listened to in isolation, but
compared to the other tracks on Again Into Eyes it feels
positively like a pop song, and in some ways a bit of a relief after
the intensely dark-hued songs to be found elsewhere on the LP. There
are two schools of thought on how to close out an LP - either with
a sombre, meditative song, or with an upbeat one; S.C.U.M have opted
for the latter. I usually prefer the former, but here it makes complete
sense.
Also included on the digital release is a single
version (with additional mixing by Daniel Miller
and David 'Saxon' Greenep), which raises the higher
octave part of the bass line up in the mix, shortens the whole thing
quite significantly and generally leaves the song sounding slightly
more poppy than the original. Chris Carter and
Cosey Fanni Tutti, aka Carter Tutti
aka Chris & Cosey aka one half of Throbbing
Gristle, turn in a beautifully stuttering, clipped industrial-electro
mix of 'Whitechapel' which sounds both abrasively glitchy and synthetically
warm on the ears by turns. It certainly knocks spots off the mixes
of 'Amber Hands' that accompanied that single, and points to great
things from their upcoming Mute album with Nik
Void from Factory Floor.
The 12" includes the B-side strained euphoria
of 'Blindness'. In my review of Again Into Eyes, I compared
the synths on the LP to OMD tracks like 'Joan Of Arc' and 'Maid
Of Orleans', and 'Blindness' definitely has the same sound, perhaps
far more so, to the point where it feels like it may well have been
lifted wholesale off Architecture And Morality. Not that
this is a bad thing, mind. Those grainy synths dominate 'Blindness',
accompanied by a shuffling ur-Balearic beat and generally comprehensible
vocals from Thomas Cohen, again doing his best
snarling Gary Numan impression.
An iTunes-exclusive remix by Barker & Baumecker
was released as a stand-alone track on the digital platform, taking
the original vocal apart whilst adding a nice electronic backdrop
of rolling android bass, shimmering synths and thudding beats. At
almost ten minutes it's tempting to describe this as epic, naturally,
but really this is just an intricate and absorbing rework of the
original that needs that duration to totally get under your skin.
Also doing the rounds is a cheery electronic reading of 'Whitechapel'
by Light Asylum which is available from Mute's Soundcloud page.
This is all Hot Chip / LCD Soundsystem retro beats, big, growling
bass synths and industrial club-friendly clangs. It's not a patch
on either the original or the Carter Tutti retread, but it's good
nonetheless.
The Tim Noble and Sue Webster-directed video for
'Whitechapel' can be viewed below.
mute artists | i muteTBC | 30/12/2011 | track
listing
'Faith Unfolds' was one of the stand-out tracks
from S.C.U.M's Again Into Eyes. The track
opens with some shimmering, elegiac keyboard patterns from Bradley
Baker - cf OMD's 'Joan Of Arc' / 'Maid Of Orleans' - which
remain throughout the song but soon get subsumed by whining guitar
textures from Samuel Kilcoyne, Psychocandy
drumming from the elfin Melissa Rigby and a powerful
bass undertow from Huw Webb. Meanwhile vocalist
Thomas Cohen sings an elliptical tale of faith
and fate and love. On the face of it, 'Faith Unfolds' should feel
uplifting, but listen closely to Cohen's semi-snarled delivery and
that optimism feels strained somehow, a certain feeling of disappointment
edging its way into his singing.
The track gets the remix treatment from Silver
Alert – Grinderman / Nick
Cave & The Bad Seeds drummer Jim Sclavunos
(who pre-produced Again Into Eyes) and Peter Mavrogeorgis
– and Wolf Eyes' Aaron Dilloway. A free mix by Deptford Goth
was also doing the rounds before the digital single was released.
Silver Alert's mix strips the track back, emphasising the stuttering
bass and vocal harmonies that swirl around Cohen on the original,
while also adding wandering synth tones; it has the effect of giving
the track a sense of euphoria which was bludgeoned out of the original.
Dilloway's mix takes the track even further apart,
running the vocals backwards and creating a toxic stew of grainy
industrial cues – fuzzy drones, distorted drum hits, cracked
ear-shredding noise - and skittering bleeps. The whole thing rather
makes you yearn for those scuzzy late Seventies / early Eighties
when Industrial Records ruled the dirty music underground.
I imagine this is what happens when you play 'Faith Unfolds' through
a distortion pedal, sample the results and reconstruct the lot.
The free Deptford Goth mix places 'Faith Unfolds'
into Warp-style electronica territory, replacing the stentorian
drumming of the original with an echoing, vaguely dubby electronic
rhythm and emphasising the string sounds. It's sparse and hypnotic
and pretty gentle on the eardrums after Dilloway's noise assault.
The Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard-directed video
for 'Faith Unfolds' can be viewed below.
