This music breathed itself into existence, forcing its way into the mundane world in Summer 2023. Beginning life as parts of a larger, more private sketchbook of ideas, these two weird siblings refused to be ignored or forced into shape and form by me, demanding to be extracted and let loose on the world on their own. Recorded over two days in Huddersfield and Bradford, UK, Scapegoat and Pule are two jagged shards of free-form metal music. They exhibit the distilled, concentrated composite aesthetical ideas which form the genre; energy generated from, high volume, repetition, distortion and improvisation.
Whilst trying to write new music for a more expected band and compositional style, this record revealed itself. Wielding the instruments for primarily tonal and dynamic exploration, the guitar reflects the new geographic surroundings I find myself in - the hard, dramatic and steep stone inclines of the moors and tops on which I now live and work with the consistently sonic battering we experience from the weather in this region, often high, dangerous winds and savage thunderstorms. Early feedback from friends highlighted this analogy and it immediately pulled the music into focus and gave a new project a pathway and direction.
This music was recorded in one take, the feral saxophone performance brash and unrestrained in its bullishness, committing to modal free-jazz meditation, flexing to simply perverted, sweaty acrobatics on a knife edge, able to do the long, mantra like work, and descend into crazed atonal freak-outs in olympian style. The guitar, though defiantly rooted in metal-hardcore and thrash metal, tuned low to Open C, is begging you freak out and exit early, miss it’s own atonal and free-no-wave kink. Tough ones know. In both pieces the way in which the high end and harmonics tear across the performance like shrapnel or razorwire is the most conscious intention the improv ever had. Sustained treble and bass attack forever.
In October 2023, the music was sympathetically mixed by Misha Hering at Hollow Earth in Geneva, and mastered by Rashad Becker in Berlin. Cover illustration is by Wesley Brown.
credits
released October 31, 2023
GUITAR: GEORGE CLIFT
SAXOPHONE: DUFFIN
PRODUCTION: GC + DUFFIN
MIXING: MISHA HERING
MASTERING: RASHAD BECKER
ILLUSTRATION: WESLEY BROWN
