Bleep

‘Fatty’ is a desperate suite of consoling, tanked songs by UK composer Laurie Tompkins. Friends’ samples, instruments and voi ces sag and soar through intimately deranged, muckily decadent productions. The mind runs fast while the body lags, sludge in a cage, fat coagulating on bones. Opulent throw-downs from Teresa Winter, Gwilly Edmondez, Eliza McCarthy and Otto Willberg are the backdrop for Laurie’s voice to heave into the sky, or lilt, baffled, through the gunk. Elsewhere, Gwilly and Jess Hickie-Kallenbach (Still House Plants) are all power, grain, and delight as they sing through a scrub of electric violin and too-smooth keys. Aaron Parker binges through manic arabesques for spinnet, xylophone and vibraphone on “Sombor Shuffle”, as strangely graceful as the Nuggets’ no 15.

The album is accompanied by videos and images by Joel Wycherley, whose dummy burb of dredged-up ornaments, wasted dwellings, and mouldy mother nature feels realer and faker than life. His 33-33 debut is one of Laurie’s three spring ’22 discs, between an album with Eliza McCarthy for Entr’acte and another with Eliza and Ashley Paul for Hyperdelia.Laurie Tompkins (b.1990) is a UK composer, performer and co-founder and co-director of the Slip label. From scores for samples, instruments and voices he creates a grabbable music that dreams and confounds. Bodies, things, words, and sounds strain under duress, looping their way through scenes of g rubby presence, not-quite riff, mouldy echo, and swollen bombast. Laurie co-directs Slip, which has released music by Yeah You, Mica Levi, Julia Reidy, Bass Clef, Object Collection, Mentos Gulgendo, Chaines & Competition. Old releases of his own include ‘Ample Profanity’ (2018), with cellist Oliver Coates; ‘Heat, War, Sweat, Law’ (2016); and ‘Exorcise’ (2021), as Yes Indeed with bassist Otto Willberg, justly hailed as “proper, mad scones” (Boomkat). Performances: Café Oto, Aldeburgh Music, Spike Island, Harp Art Lab (Harplinge) and National Sawdust (New York). Commissions: House of Bedlam, Daylight Editions, LSO Soundhub Scheme, ddmmyy and 840 series. Radio: specials for NTS and Resonance FM and a session with Adam Bohman recorded at Maida Vale studios, broadcast on BBC Radi o 3.