Mzylkypop
Threnodies and Ad Hocs
UK DISCUS MUSIC DISCUS 171CD (2024)
Warped UK art rock and songs, often with detours into a species of experimental Techno with spoken-word interludes and harangues. Michael Somerset (also known as Michael Ward from Clock DVA and Floy Joy) is the main creator with his keyboards, woodwinds, electronics, voice and percussion, although David Lewin is never far away with additional instrumental support, and the singing voice of Sylwia Anna Drwal haunts a lot of the dramatic, urgent songs.
Evidently there’s a strong connection to Sheffield, the home of this label and its owner Martin Archer; Somerset refers obliquely to “Steel City rehearsals” in his account of his musical and creative history, and members of important Sheffield bands Adi Newton (Clock DVA) and Stephen Mallinder (Cabaret Voltaire) also appear, a fact which you’d think would have been emblazoned on a hype sticker. Newton’s recit on ‘Future Cartography’ is a kind of sub-Burroughs rant, an unstoppable flow of obscure images where it’s not clear if he’s reflecting on his own rich past or foreseeing a bleak dystopia, with phrases such as “the political economy of noise” uttered implacably in a grating tone against a jazz-inflected Techno stew. Mallinder’s vision on ‘Doomerati’ is expressed through the prism of an echo chamber to lend extra weight to the apocalyptic gloom. Somerset has also played with Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere on this label, and appeared on the Julie Tippetts / Martin Archer Illusion record from 2022, itself an equally overpowering blend of jazz and Techno.
Today’s record might be a follow up to Kiedy Wilki Zawyja? from 2021, which for some reason I perceived as an electropop extravagance intended to showcase the singing talents of Sylwia Anna Drwal; today’s item is no less histrionic, and there are songs but more instrumentals too, and one senses that now Somerset is pulling things in his own chosen direction. The overall mood is dour, but also pugnacious, as Somerset and his allies rail against the forces of darkness. (18/04/2024)