Bleep

Chiselling away at the layered post-rock sonics of her previous full length, Emma Ruth Rundle’s Engine of Hell opts for sparse intensity. Piano or guitar and voice pieces dominate here, and the songwriting - existential reckonings with grief and trauma, expressed through an intimate vocal given nowhere to hide - recalls moments from Grouper or Anthony and the Johnsons. While a departure from previous sounds, the album’s immense yearning and emotionality keeps it in conversation with Rundle’s 2020 collaboration with Thou, May Our Chambers Be Full, as if at any moment the sludge could raise its head.