4iB Records | For intrinsic Beliefs

 

” The irony of life is that those who wear masks often tell us more truths than those with open faces. ”

 

Does any human being show their true self?

Is there a person amongst us who never hides their stomach churning conflicting emotions behind a blank or smiling facade?

Behind the multitude of masks that you wear; how do you know who is the real you?

Do you even care anymore?

Or has life simply become a charade where you masquerade as what you honestly believe others wish from you?

Kevin Tomkins and Paul Taylor know a lot about masks. For almost four decades now they have utilised the faces of others, not to hide away but in order to explore the darkest, most depraved personas of the dregs, the deranged and the worst of human kind. 

With Sutcliffe Jugend they utilised the howling chaos of Power Electronics in their venomous examination of the psyche of both aggressor and victim. By donning the veil of those malignant societal outcasts they plumbed the depths of both psychological and sonic horror. Their early work was rakish libertinage, a theatre of cruelty, an audio Grand Guignol. 

Their brief side project Bodychoke was a very different musical endeavor that managed to retain SJ’s baleful explorations of the shadowy realms of the human condition .With Bodychoke though the synapse shredding feedback was replaced with a more musical approach that was based on conventional rock music.  

From serial killers, abusers, the abused, the victim and the survivor; Tomkins and Taylor managed to get into the subconscious of their subjects with an often alarming sense of both ease and enthusiasm. 

This wasn’t just shock tactics, there always was a sense of seeking to find the true face of those who were willing to commit such heinous acts against their fellow humans. 

To understand.

To know.

Sutcliffe Jugend finally ceased their work over three decades of experimentation with sound and ideas in 2019. Over the course of this long recording career they moved away from the harsh sound of their formative years towards a more introspective experimental sound. A sound that involved using both acoustic and electronic methods to purvey the darkness that lies in all of us.

Domestic is their new album under the moniker Sutcliffe No More. The new project being both a nod to their lengthy past and an acknowledgement of the future they initiated with the Scott Walkeresque stand alone Slaves No More release.

The album is a deeply unsettling listen. It was recorded remotely at the height of the first lockdown in the United Kingdom. Isolated alone and unable to meet both Tomkins and Taylor set about sending one another fragments of sound and text which would be worked on again and again until the tracks that grace this two disk set began to crystallize and form. 

There is a sense of claustrophobic density within the tracks which is very unusual as this is not a dense morass of sound but a more minimal approach to recording. There isn’t hugely complicated patterns to discern but every  sound is honed to absolute perfection. Every click, scrape, drone, pulse, chord is perfectly placed within the track. It is a work of meticulous intensity. Domestic is a focused work of obsessive detail. There are moments of striking beauty and stomach churning dread. Nothing is overused and equally nothing is underused. Every word and sound has been carefully analysed for maximum effect.

The final few Sutcliffe Jugend albums were lyrically highly unusual, it appeared that the masks worn to plumb the depths had began to slip and what we were catching sight of was the wounded man behind the facade. 

Sutcliffe No More has seen the mask cast aside and the cauldron of horror that exists in all of us is now fully exposed to our eyes.

Tomkins lyrics are both disgusting and disgusted. There is both a sense of indignation at the horrors and resignation that we are helpless in the face of such malevolence.

The recurring themes of entrapment, abandonment, loneliness and abuse highlight the huge rise in cases of domestic violence during the lockdown. 

If your home becomes a prison where you are caged with a beast, then just where can you go to find sanctity and safety?

How long before you home goes from prison to your own personal morgue?

The most horrifying listen of the album must be the title track ‘Domestic’. It begins with a beautific organ that draws you into the sanctity of home, lulling you into a false sense of domestic bliss before the slow unfurling horror of the destructive nature of an abusive relationship becomes clear. It is a creeping malevolence that details the relationship between a man with mental health issues and his violent addict partner. Tomkins manages to convey both the vindictive spite of the aggressor and the hollowed out emotional wreckage that is the victim. 

Domestic is not an easy listen. It is also an album not easy to categorise. It is perhaps the most organic album that Taylor/Tomkins have released. The majority of the music being from autoharp, synth, guitars and organ. It is also the most alien sounding of all their material. Everything is so clinically cold and foreboding. There is no sense of hope.

Listening to Domestic was the sonic equivalent of been waterboarded, your all alone and gasping for air. The walls have closed in and there is nothing to breathe but hopelessness. 

These aren’t songs; despite there being words.

This isn’t abstract avant garde sound experiments, there is too much purpose for abstraction.

What this album is then are razor blade cuts upon the tapestry of life.

Cuts that expose the putrescent filth that dwells like a coiled snake in the souls of everyone of us.

 

Kristian Carter 

( October 2021 )