Bleep

On Dilemmas Of Identity and Nightshade, Wolf Eyes’ Nate Young found himself forging a sound that balanced a sort of disorientated take on electronic punk with the kind of melodic loops one found in the output of Feels-era Animal Collective. However, on the latest of Young’s solo EPs we see him ditching the psychedelic treatments of Panda, Avey et al.

On Volume Three: Dance Of The Weeping Babe, Young strips out pretty much everything bar the rhythm and the noise. This is a collection of slow, unsettling beat tracks, the roots of which lie in minimal wave, industrial music and the ‘freakbeat’ sound currently being pioneered by Black Dice’s Eric Copeland. The loping tempo of Dance Of The Weeping Babe, and the fact that the numbers here do not vary much, means that Dance Of The Weeping Babe sounds like it’s been conceived to soundtrack someone wading through a tar pit.

Young chooses to augment his drums sparingly. While always liberally doused with delay - a technique that evokes a latent dub influence - these tracks only bring one or two elements into play alongside the rhythms. ‘Human Pond’, for instance, features a half-sung vocal that could have been culled from the last Girl Band LP, while ‘People Lose’ focuses on an unsettling single-note piano loop. All of the space on this record makes it at once unsettling and intriguing in a manner that recalls Suicide or Cabaret Voltaire.

The third release in Nate Young’s ongoing EP series finds the Wolf Eyes mainstay going even further down the rabbit hole.