RAIN OF MOLTEN IRON by CURVED NEEDLE

Rush Hour Store Record of the week W20:

It’s been twenty years since West London techno producer and Continual Records co-founder Tommy Gillard released his last solo record. He’s now back with a bang - and a pretty scary one at that.

After spending large parts of the last decade in the studio with fellow UK techno veteran Oliver Ho (better known nowadays as Broken English Club) releasing work as Zov Zov on Ho’s Death & Leisure and the ever reliable Berceuse Heroique, Gillard now joins Interstellar Funk’s Artificial Dance roster as Curved Needle.

Opening with the ominous and icey cold title track, Gillard makes it clear straight away he’s not here to make any new friends - he’s out for blood with six bone-rattling slo-mo post-electronic body music exercitions of the bleakest kind. Did anyone say ‘horrorwave’?

An aggressive half-speed drum & bass-hoover (think Ed Rush & Optical anno 1997 sawn in half) underlays the dystopic yet blatantly brilliant electro nightmare that is ‘Change-Power’, before things get even more sinister on ‘Sworn in Blood’ and ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’.

This may be a tad too slow and low to serve as your average dancefloor fodder, but it’s perfect torture room material. Now excuse me while I go mop up some blood. (RO)

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Nearly twenty years on from his last solo sortie, Tommy Gillard reemerges as Curved  Needle with “Rain Of Molten Iron” - a new six-tracker scoping out the confines between  hi-octane body music and FX-riddled experimentation. 

After spending most of the decade working in the studio with Oliver Ho alias Broken  English Club as Zov Zov, the West London-based producer reignites the flame of trueschool horror electronics with five cuts heaving us into a furnace of post-apocalyptic  machine talk by the scruff of the neck, complimented by a remix from Broken English Club.