Demdike Stare - Voices Of Dust

That man has escaped his Pendle Coven again and has recently been spotted skulking around the sinister backwaters of Lancashire with his erstwhile partner-in-crime - the one who actually finds lots of amazing records in junk shops whereas everyone else finds Jim Diamonds's Greatest Hits & a knackered copy of the best of Dionne Warwick. Yes Demdike Stare unleash the final installment of their uniformly excellent 2010 album series. This track - 'Hashshashin Chant' - that eventually crawls out of the sonic murk (after a somewhat eerie introduction) is quite something. They call it bellydance disco, I call it Shackleton gobbling an old Diplo baltimore/kuduro platter and regurgitating it back up in the form of a malevolent Eastern chant/dub-snake of a thing. Tribal-as-fuck, with a distinct unsettling edge. It makes me think of the aural equivalent of a Chinese dragon populated by scores of shady faceless spies on creepy drugs, the whole carnival feel stunted by paranoia. It is a totally flooring piece of understated soundsystem ammunition. Things go more minimal with the slowly evolving 'Repository of Light' which marries woozy drone, dark ambient & eventually submerged dub techno that gives way to some class pulsing kosmische visions. Side two brings back the blackened magic, blending ambient-noir with dubby jitters & sinister intentions. Further brief exploration (I'll save the full immersion for home, thanks) sees further entwining of murky bass with all manner of disorientating, foreboding samples & effects. Clanking, funereal dirges and some pitch-black ghostly drones. Well dystopian. It all culminates in a very eerie bad place indeed. I think the boys may have found their way back to the coven, except they may now have some surprise company. Brrrrr, I feel soiled, but in a really good way....