LIED TO BE LOVED by JON CONVEX (INSTRA:MENTAL) FT. DBRIDGE

Following his solo debut on 3024 with ‘Convexations’ / ‘Falling Again’ towards the end of 2011 we’re very pleased to welcome Damon Kirkham back to our trans-continental fold again, this time with another long time friend of the label in tow. Since that initial EP, follow up releases on [nakedlunch], Non Plus and his own recently formed Convex Industries imprint have rapidly established the Jon Convex sound in its own right, taking his former group Instra:mental’s tireless explorations on the analogue frontier and recalibrating it directly for the warehouse floor.First featured track here is ‘Lied To Be Loved’, featuring the ever building vocal talents of dBridge (last seen round these parts voicing Martyn’s ‘These Words’). Diamond tipped drum programming is met with a reprise of ‘Convexations’ Moroder/Human Centipede bass, fashioned into something far more brooding & glowering here. dBridges vocal drapes it’s self over the rhythm section like a particularly unavoidable raincloud as keening synth washes and resigned harmonies build towards a disorientating tension that fragments before ever attempting to resolve.’Zero’ snaps proceedings back into sharp clarity, with the kind of muscular Edison funk that can trace it’s lineage back to Dússeldorf via Rotters Golf Clubs, The Scene & Beat Street. An uncompromising forward march of a beat and electronically distorted female syllables vainly fight for space with the Bootsy-by-way-of-Cybertron bass line that arrives to dominate the arrangement, as a morse code anti-melody attempts to fill in the gaps left behind by Boots-atron’s trail of destruction.’Stay’ closes the EP, drawing a line under what’s come before with perhaps the most melodically refined piece of Convex material so far. Drifting in on billowing synth chords and a deceptively muted electronic kit, a blissfully androgynous vocal trace introduces a synth arpeggio that twists, expands and contracts throughout the tracks duration, sometimes running alongside that same vocal clip before incorporating a second melody at the tracks peak and fading out of sight.Matching the stylistic growth of the material Erosie’s artwork retains it’s fundamental role in 3024′s identity, expanding his collage series into a fresh area of chromatic alchemy and spatial complexity while retaining all the elements of his own style.