Pye Corner Audio: The Black Mist EP
Front & Follow

How to describe the Pye Corner Audio sound? Birthed by the mysterious Head Technician, it's a spooky, spaced-out spectre that's somehow managed to assume material form within the current realm. Characterized by a raw analogue character and smothered in grit and grime, the creature has been previously sighted on labels such as Dekorder and Type, and perhaps most appropriately on Ghost Box in the form of the full-length album Sleep Games. This latest outing, a collaborative EP (available in twelve-inch vinyl and digital formats) by Front & Follow and The Outer Church, presents an extended mix of “Black Mist” (the original of which appeared on Front & Follow's 2013 The Outer Church compilation), a remix of same by Old Apparatus, and a new original.

The title track opens the nineteen-minute release with a pulsating throb whose wobble—a bizarro amalgam of techno and drum'n'bass—swells in volume and agitation until the addition of warbling synth textures recasts the frenzied epic as a dark sci-fi dynamo that's time-traveled from the ‘60s. Emerging from mist, “Bulk Erase” eases into position in a more leisurely fashion by comparison, its slow-motion shuffle making room for a melancholy array of analogue synth melodies to work their black magic. As shadowy a figure as the Head Technician is Old Apparatus (whose debut album, Compendium, appeared on Sullen Tone in 2013), which made the act a natural candidate as remixer for “Black Mist.” The diseased treatment Old Apparatus turns in certainly suggests that the two are kindred spirits, especially when the remix smothers the original's rhythms in a blizzard of garbled voices and smoke.

August-September 2014