SHEMALE: Opening The Astral Doors
Further Records

A bizarre story lurks behind the SHEMALE concept that involves a failed lab experiment in the Bio-weapons division of ManCorp that resulted in a lab technician being transformed into a “hybrid humanoid robot” called—what else?—SHEMALE. S/he escaped ManCorp's clutches and went into hiding in a subterranean cave system beneath Newcastle-upon-Tyne where s/he retreated “into a parallel universe to create dark, dystopian machine-music, influenced by a synthetic dream of Hyperborea, the land beyond the North Wind.” There's certainly more than enough truth in advertising in this case, as the cassette release (100 copies) features five eerie incantations originating from the darkest reaches of space. Sounding at times like rumbling astral transmissions, the material, dominated as it is by synthesizer warble, whooshes, alien squiggles, and ominous bass tones and identified by evocative titles such as “Crossing the Pentagram” and “Summon the Sea Witch,” oozes dark portent through its every pore. Think of SHEMALE's ebony black miniatures as some viral hybrid of Coil, Drexciya (“Horned God Ritual” in particular), and kosmische musik, and you're touring through the right galaxy, as it were.

December 2010