The Haxan Cloak - The Men Parted The Sea To Devour The Water

In the artwork of this very CD Haxan Cloak’s work is described as “rumblescapes” which saves me the trouble of inventing the word myself, although in fairness as far as Mr Cloak’s work goes this is less rumblescapey than some I’ve heard, with those super-subby grainy textures forming only a tiny part of the aesthetic variety on offer here. It does start rumbly, before it heads into some skittish melodic techno territory that’s pretty lovely and then drifts into more of a dark crispy post-dubsteppy groove which is reminding our Brian of Shackleton. If it reminds me of anybody I think it’s probably Astral Social Club.

It seems like a bit of a departure for the Latitudes series, which seems to have concentrated on more rock-oriented artists in the past, to have someone whose music is so deeply rooted in techno taking part (although the press release leaves me unclear as to whether they’ve heard this record yet, since they recommend it to fans of The Dirty Three, The Locust and Health!?), but the half-hour long jam on here never sits still, with details and textures and melodies constantly washing over you in a way which keeps sending me into a repeato-trance, making it very hard to review because I keep finding myself staring into the middle-distance doing nothing. There’s some gorgeous descending synth chirps about 20 minutes that are blissing me right out. In fact in general this is making me feel great. Get involved.