The Helm - Axis - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

London exploratory industrialist Luke Younger characterizes the creation of his latest collection, Axis, as a liberating return to roots InchIt felt like going back to the beginning, it felt freeing.Inch Begun before the pandemic as a soundtrack to a dance performance, the initial vision was for something Inchvisceral, with physical movement in mind.Inch When the project shifted to indefinite hiatus, he reimagined the material in the context of an LP, while retaining it's sense of dynamic physicality. The result is grim and gripping, seasick throbs lurching in a low-ceilinged space, strafed with fractured clanging, hissing steam, and grinding spirals of granular haze. Noise in it's most elevated and compelling form, from and for the body as much as the mind.The album's unique immediacy stems from Younger's instinctual muse, reactivating raw methods with fresh energy. InchI tuned back in to working with noise techniques again more primitive equipment, cheap FX, contact mics, noise boxes.Inch Key guest contributions by Lucy Railton (cello), Mark Morgan of Sightings (guitar), Alex Tucker (vocals), and the late, legendary John Hannon (violin) further enrich the record's bristling palette. Although half the tracks were begun pre-Covid at Hannon's Essex studio, the rest were finished in Younger's kitchen and living room during lockdown. The final tracks were then relayed to veteran mix specialist Randall Dunn, who further honed the material, adding a vivid spatial quality.From the hellscape metronome of InchMoskitoInch to the insectoid warzone pulse of InchRepellentInch to the seething orchestral undertow of InchAxis,Inch this is music of ominous gravity and worlds in peril. But it's the closing cut, InchTower,Inch which Younger calls Inchperhaps the most dramatic piece of music I've ever made.Inch A lurking, blackened descension conjured on keys, guitar, and wormhole wah