Scissorgun - All You Love Is Need - Aural Assault - Out 19th June 2020
Psychedelic post-industrialists Scissorgun have just one previous release to their name, a 10" EP and (coincidentally) an album by Crispy Ambulance. Founder Alan Hempsall of said former Factory band is one-half of this duo alongside synthesist Dave Clarkson of Spectral Bazaar and the noise they make is as engaging as it is occasionally disorientating, beautiful and cacophonous.
All You Love Is Need is something of a statement. As the enclosed notes confirm, "the album refects a subliminal shift in people's perceptions of global events... we work to subvert the narrative, whilst keeping close to the one thing that unites us all - hope." Thus, All You Love Is Need is reliant on mood, very few lyrics and a latent energy just boiling over on occasion or at least never far from the surface.
Opener Terminal Velocity (Syncing) and elegaic mid-set thumper Bruise sound like Dua Lipa or Nicki Minaj on quaaludes with 808 State acting as chemists, a sort of Kraft-Twerk for the disenfranchised straight from the hips. Elsewhere there's funereal post-rock and groove in the form of highlight Hybrid Threat and the sub-sonic ambient Dark Routines, interspersed with shorter atmospheric trinkets Station Drift pts 1 and 2 and the squally quadrophonic Forensic Dub.
If they unearth a chunk of portentous Black Mirror outtakes anytime soon, you wouldn't bet against Scissorgun being the main soundtrack protagonists. The tracks here are by turns disturbing, insistent, trancelike and downright odd - but that's Hempsall and Clarkson's charm, their u.s.p., their modus operandi. In these times, all you might need is All You Love Is Need.
8/10
All You Love Is Need is something of a statement. As the enclosed notes confirm, "the album refects a subliminal shift in people's perceptions of global events... we work to subvert the narrative, whilst keeping close to the one thing that unites us all - hope." Thus, All You Love Is Need is reliant on mood, very few lyrics and a latent energy just boiling over on occasion or at least never far from the surface.
Opener Terminal Velocity (Syncing) and elegaic mid-set thumper Bruise sound like Dua Lipa or Nicki Minaj on quaaludes with 808 State acting as chemists, a sort of Kraft-Twerk for the disenfranchised straight from the hips. Elsewhere there's funereal post-rock and groove in the form of highlight Hybrid Threat and the sub-sonic ambient Dark Routines, interspersed with shorter atmospheric trinkets Station Drift pts 1 and 2 and the squally quadrophonic Forensic Dub.
If they unearth a chunk of portentous Black Mirror outtakes anytime soon, you wouldn't bet against Scissorgun being the main soundtrack protagonists. The tracks here are by turns disturbing, insistent, trancelike and downright odd - but that's Hempsall and Clarkson's charm, their u.s.p., their modus operandi. In these times, all you might need is All You Love Is Need.
8/10