Silencer

Luke Younger aka Helm follows-up last year's widely acclaimed 'Impossible Symmetry' album with four tracks of eldritch electronics and cranky drums crafted in its wake. Helm's rhythmic tracks have always struck us most, so its to our dark pleasure that he's worked further on that tilt with 'Silencer', conjuring alchemical reactions between autistic, brittle-boned percussions and uncompromisingly noxious atmospheres which make most other "dark"-dwelling artists seem pseudo in comparison. Informed by a taste for the most decrepit, cruddy tone and poised with a steadfast, stare-down glower, he hoofs clods of flinty drums comparable with the recent Wolf Eyes sound against oppressive atmospheres redolent of Kevin Drumm's 'Imperial Distortion' on 'Silencer', and slowly sinks into boggy marshland ambience under the peal of sustained foghorn brass performed by John Hannon ov Liberez in 'Mirrored Palms'. Flipside, 'Bergamo' inhabits a claggy tunnel of effluent, roiling drums and marrow-freezing atmospheres, and our favourite, 'The Haze' epitomises the EP's strange sense of detachment with insectoid, mechanical percussions and field recordings diffused to a visceral yet spacious sort of para-dimensional dread. You're best seeing this EP as a companion piece to 'Impossible Symmetry', - it's just as heavy and equally frightening.