Running Repairs is the right name for this, his return to recording after an extended sabbatical.
[Releases page] As befits a label named after the visual signal receptor of the brain, each new release on Striate Cortex is a design event. Mounted photos, slipcovers made of hessian and velvet, and often as not, abstract, hand-painted covers, making each unit unique. The label turns packaging its music into an artform itself.
It is also a perfect fit for the music of Midwich. Midwich is Rob Hayler of Leeds and he and his now defunct Fencinig Flatworm label form the hub of the ”No Audience” underground network, a labour of love ”scene” featuring diverse, innovative ”edge-music” and electronica that almost nobody even knows exists, although a lot of them certainly would appreciate finding out, because it pays no regard to any other agenda than quality and artistic integrity. In other words, Hayler, like Striate Cortex, has had a quietly profound effect on the sound and shape of the do-it-yourself arts community in Great Britain.
Running Repairs is the right name for this, his return to recording after an extended sabbatical. The opening, twenty-one minute ”New Territories” sounds like an engine being given a vigorous test-run after having undergone a major overhaul. It’s a humming, heated, oily drone, pistons, rods and crank shafts all revved up to full effect. As it thrums on, the ear begins to differentiate different strands, the mesmerizing effect helped along by the slightest dub adjustments which I suspect are the work of co-creator Daniel Thomas, a hometown colleague who shortly after this session released his own solo recording on the label.
A brief ”Pennine Interlude,” a kind of knee play keeping the spirit of Running Repairs roused by documenting the conversation-drowning passage of a bullet train, separates the two, twenty-plus minute pieces. “Bosky” is a grinding, more demanding drone, its hard edge keening and shuddering enough to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up in titillation as it grates on your last nerve.
Hayler speaks of “dissolving the ego” through listening and dipping your ears into Running Repairs—will turn your brain into a malleable, agreeable mush.
Running Repairs is available on Striate Cortex. [Releases page | Listen]
