A deep sonic haze hangs like a pall over the subterranean funk of the title track which heralds the arrival of the debut long-player from the hotly-tipped Gazelle Twin. It’s heavy with paranoia, laced with tension and tight with claustrophobic menace.
Jittery industrial-edged beats and vocals pitch shifted up, down and sideways give ‘GUTS’ an unsettling edge and a vibe akin to Test Department and Meat Beat Manifesto, and ‘Exorcise’ locks into a nagging groove that sounds how the Factory Floor album perhaps could have sounded if they hadn’t gone off the boil. It’s electronic music, it’s dance and it’s pop, but not as we’ve come to know it.
‘Good Death’ is a haunting song about euthanasia that manages to sound like Throbbing Gristle covering ‘I Feel Love’. It’s nothing if not compelling listening, and the hammering rhythm of ‘Anti Body’, unveiled in the Spring, batters the listener into submission. Elizabeth Bernholz’s vocals are perfectly adept at channelling the mood: at times breathy and ethereal, at others clipped and dangerous-sounding, and others still simply not of this world (as on the hauntingly minimal ‘Premonition’.
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If you’re looking for light at the end of the tunnel, the tortured exotica of ‘Still Live’, with its clanking percussion and rumbling bass is unlikely to provide it, but it does perfectly round off an album that succeeds in sustaining its rarefied atmosphere for its full duration.
‘Unflesh’ is a daring and difficult album that doesn’t offer much opportunity for the listener to get comfortable. Stark, challenging and often bleak, it’s nevertheless utterly compelling and a little bit disturbing.
Gazelle Twin Online
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