Cassette
Still House Plants' Finlay Clark ventures out on his own for a debut collection that hits a sweet spot between the angular DIY abrasions of his main band and the more abstracted experimental terrain we might ordinarily connect with Mica Levi and associates (ala Ruff Dog/Blue Alibi). If this isn't the zeitgeist right now, it's probably just about to be. AD93 is a fitting home, living as it does in some hinterland between modern electronic experimentation and nu-alt guitar-based music, though you could just as easily envisage it surfacing via Bison, the label that's given us both SHP records as well as Allie Ormstron and Tim Fraser's It Changes, another product of Glasgow's new underground which feels like a spiritual cousin of sorts to Sicko. The reasons why aren't immediately tangible, but what becomes clear is a shared art-school derived propensity to explore, provoke and every now and then, pull the rug from under you. Clark performs fearlessly, a free-form guitar player with an obvious love for early 80s Chicago and a larynx he's not afraid to abuse, but obviously not just that, also incorporating surprisingly lush piano etudes and droning compositions, a scattershot union of ideas that's perhaps a product of what Clark describes as "writing from a place of anger while also writing this ‘utopian sounding’ music". Utopian anger? 2023 might have just stumbled upon 2024's hottest new craze. On this evidence, i'm happy to sign up.
