Bleep

Kaleidoscope's new LP swells unsteadily into existence, with the tinkle of half-jazzy drums filtering through an industrial gloom. It's a sign that what is to come isn't your standard down-the-line hardcore offering. Title track After The Futures..., for instance, opens with a languorous guitar stab that wouldn't be out of a place on a drone or noise record, a brooding rumble like a distant closing door in an warehouse, before the song tumbles into gear, Shiva enunciating the lyrics with a sharp-tongued Jerry A-like clarity. From the chomp of Sigint --> E.K.I.A., the deathrock swells swooping out from the itchy insistent guitar line of Crocodile Tears to deep thrum of Soft Cage, After The Futures... is full of moments of punk broken and reconstituted, familiar structures and beats rearranged in the uncomfortable clamour into something wilder and weirder. It's about sustained tension before a riff kicks in, a solo looking like it's about to soar before being broken sharply off into a thorny keening. A punk record fractured and sliced-through, twisted into fresh shape and shining with a razor's gleam. (Joe Briggs) After The Futures... comes housed in a due tone heavy board offset sleeve and includes an A2 poster and a 16 pages risographed lyric booklet.