Bleep

Jodey Kendrick weaves intoxicating sound design on this release for Clone/DUB Records inspired by unusual stimulus. When you think of the Bedfordshire countryside, you’re likely to conjure vast stretches of farmland broken up with serene trails and the occasional 9th-century landmark. In other words, it’s a somewhat unlikely muse for Kendrick’s music.

The York-bred producer made a bold introduction over a decade ago with a pair of albums on Richard D. James and Grant Wilson-Claridge's Rephlex label. 2009’s +10 and its 2012 follow-up Steel Erector go wall to wall with jittery, anxiety-inducing acid tracks, locating a fitting stomping ground on these groundbreaking labels discography. Kendrick then dove deeper into ambient and downtempo experiments on subsequent releases with Clone/DUB Records.

In a sense, pastoral isolation makes a logical backdrop for Kendrick’s latest, Village Of The Damn Fine. A majority of its tracks take their names from historical landmarks and forests of the Bedfordshire region, opting to highlight the eeriness of their ancient states through modern technology. “Totternhoe Castle red kites view” opens the set with woozy unease, fittingly named after a ghost of a castle that only has earthworks left to show for its existence. Kendrick seems gleeful in conjuring horror amidst the historically mundane, pulling glitchy techno terror out of ‘Coombe Hill monument’ before delivering skull-rattling bass in honour of one of Bedfordshire's most palatial estates on ‘Wrest Park dark grove find.’ Village Of The Damn Fine would make for a great haunted tour of the region, but it seems the haunting is mostly coming from Kendrick’s vivid imagination.