Bleep

Shackleton presents surprise new album Departing Like Rivers on his own Woe To The Septic Heart! imprint, a true solo venture this time around without any other input other than the veteran producer's own. Perhaps this might be the very reason for it harking back to an earlier frequency spectrum: anyone who first discovered his work via the hallowed Skull Disco days will find much to become joyfully trapped underneath here.

While it might be free of collaborators, like his previous solitary forays the album is still populated by various sampled and prophetic voices, often wordless, harangued, disembodied, manipulated. As if lifted from a Malcolm Mooney mid-onstage break down, locked into a Can groove, caught in the infinite loop, some mumbling, some chanting their visions endlessly: "skies about to burst... skies about to burst... skies about to burst..."

In particular one incantation stands out immediately, the voice of our cultural godhead of the 20th Century, Werner Herzog, who solemnly intones what seems like realtime coping advice for out current existence right now, only beamed in from the year 1982: "We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication... overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the the stars up here in the, in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe." Shackleton expands on the various layers of voice deployed: "I also wanted the vocal aspects to reflect influences or things I could closely identify with for the most part, so there are a few hints at British folk songs in amongst the music, albeit rather ghostly and not directly recognisable."

It's a testament to Shackleton's own dark psychotropic aims that while entirely engaging, dense and dissonant music, "foggy and scuzzy" as he puts it, he also envisions it could be suitable post club come down atmospherics: "I am hoping that it may be the kind of album that people play at the end of an excessive night, like after a club being back home with some friends, sleep deprivation and whatever else kicking in together with the music helping to launch your mind into space!" Indeed, it is the place.