Bleep

North Manc Beds do not hurry their releases. When the crew issued their first records on Skam/Skam sub-label 33 back in the early 2000’s they anticipated dropping five EPs in quick succession before moving onto an LP. However, things have taken slightly longer than expected - GazOhmEater, the EP that completes the quintet, emerges a full seventeen years after debut drop Bug.

The North Manc Beds sound might not be as head-scramblingly glitchy as it once was, but there’s still a whole heap of invention to the tracks here. The closest contemporary artists to the North Manc Beds sound are the likes of Logos, Shapednoise and Szare - practitioners who are using club sounds as a springboard from which to explore post-industrial ambiences.

While these cuts are rhythmic pieces constructed from synths, samples and drum machines, it would be a stretch to call them dance music in any conventional sense. ‘Jussbassoneandone’, a digi-dancehall dub that we can envisage being dropped in one of The Bug’s sets, comes closest in this regard. ‘Moko’ has a bit of a breakbeat thing going on amid all the needling sonar sounds, and there’s a bit of techno to the stuttering ‘Safebliss 53Cond P455’. ‘Stelcore 2 (Nabz_& Cluff Version)’ is an industrialised slab of IDM. However, while there is groove here, there’s also a feeling of introspection about GazOhmEater that, in a funny sort of way, reminds us of Burial.

North Man Beds’ GazOhmEater EP is warehouse music in the truest sense of the word.