Barbados!:
Barbados!:
Critical Heights:
Out Now:
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Although branded under the Critical Heights empire, I can't find out a damned thing about this lot. Suffice to say that their music is as wilfully obscure as their biog, but thankfully easier to find - because it's all here on this nifty little six-track sampler CD or on the band's/act's/mum's Tumblr site, if you prefer less clutter.
Following on from 2011's Adagio For Bones, the propensity for lo-fi, uneasy listening continues apace, with a sort of mantra for the unhinged amongst you. The standouts are the lengthy drone of In Your Eyes and the opener Pickled In A Jar, which sounds like the kind of music you'd hear at a Masonic Lodge just before they break open the biscuits and ... oh yeah, it's supposed to be a secret.
The whole experience reminds me of The Wicker Man if staged by patients in a deserted run-down hospital on a remote Northumberland moor. Less Holby City, more One Flew Over The Silent Hill (if it ever gets made).
The short interludes merely glue the EP together into a seemless, borderless and sightless fuzz before Titoli closes proceedings with a typical atonal buzz.
Wherever Critical H are going with this lot, an album would paint a bigger picture - good though.
Barbados!:
Critical Heights:
Out Now:
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Following on from 2011's Adagio For Bones, the propensity for lo-fi, uneasy listening continues apace, with a sort of mantra for the unhinged amongst you. The standouts are the lengthy drone of In Your Eyes and the opener Pickled In A Jar, which sounds like the kind of music you'd hear at a Masonic Lodge just before they break open the biscuits and ... oh yeah, it's supposed to be a secret.
The whole experience reminds me of The Wicker Man if staged by patients in a deserted run-down hospital on a remote Northumberland moor. Less Holby City, more One Flew Over The Silent Hill (if it ever gets made).
The short interludes merely glue the EP together into a seemless, borderless and sightless fuzz before Titoli closes proceedings with a typical atonal buzz.
Wherever Critical H are going with this lot, an album would paint a bigger picture - good though.