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Saturday 15 September 2018

Consumer Electronics weight/hostility blues


Consumer Electronics – The Weight/ Hostility Blues. Harbinger Sound - harbinger 180 - 7" single.




A
the weight.

B
hostility blues.


Whenever I play Consumer Electronics I think of Philip Best, topless and twisting his nipples at me whilst shouting away at the audience - I can’t get that image out of my head; onstage Best is disturbing. CE- now a trio of Best, Sarah Froelich and Russell Haswell are powerful, conceptually challenging and complex live. This is Consumer Electronics first new single since the Dollhouse album on Harbinger Sound and Repetition Reinforcement 12” on Diagonal both from 2015. It is gorgeously presented with inner sleeve and picture cover.

The Weight opens with feedback and pulsating jabs of twisty, blasting noise; backed by a constant mid paced beat. It continues the beat-based assault, peppered with short, rhythmic cuts of noise that featured on Dollhouse Songs. The main Best/ Froelich vocal is very warped in sound, this makes it partly comedic and keeps your attention with seedy, unhinged dialogue. The familiar Best vocal that comes in mid-way through the track is cut up so multiple Bests seem to shout out over each other. The theme centres on murder victims, most of whose bodies remained unidentified for years after they were found. Weight comes off like some sort of dissected dance track with screwy, combative vocals: a multiple personality pile-up.

Hostility blues creates rhythm through fart like noises that lose time as siren like sound runs parallel and another tweaked vocal delivers more rage and bile. Hostility blues’ sonic tweaking is even more comedic and hysterical in comparison to that of the weight. However instead of the choppy, multiple rage of Weight, hostility’s Froelich vocals have a consistent fluidity to their delivery.   

I like this single as it seems to push forwards in finding new deliveries for the centre stage vocal within the overall sound of Consumer Electronics. They also seem to keep finding ways to be even more minimal in their use of different sounds as if constantly stripping back to the core of each track. It is also disturbing in how everything has been mixed and adjusted, it seems purposely disjointed. I do seem to be stuck in a theme of psychic warfare while reviewing it, having to check if my turn table is playing up, adjusting the record’s speed. Can’t wait for more as always where Consumer Electronics is concerned. I am also really-excited as I am getting a vinyl copy of Estuary English for Christmas this year and I also want to bunk off work to go see them in Manchester this month with Skullflower and Iron Fist of the Sun. Yeah!!!!!!

Choppy Noodles 2018