Thomas Bush - Preludes

Thomas Bush's work as one half of RAP has made him a constant of sorts at WOE for the past few years, though it's been a decent stint since his debut solo record, 2018's beautifully lonesome sounding Old and Red. He returns now with this new LP on, interestingly enough, Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox, the label run by Julius & Elin from Monokultur/Loopsel. How that's come about is for them to say, though the sonic connections make a fair bit of sense. It's the first album on the label to not feature either J or E, though Bush's compositional skills share some space with the ethereal and sometimes skeletal aspects of their music, the close mic-d nature of the recording lending that same shimmering transluence. Bush sings on a few of these tracks, notably opener Firstly, sounding a fair bit like Felt/early Creation, but despite such melodicism it would be quite a stretch to view these songs in the same 4AD-styled post-punk/shoegaze manner you might those of his label bosses. There's some links back to the ghostly, midnight worlds of Jolly Discs and some of the outsider eccentricities of Spillage Fete, though mostly what resonates for me is the mid section of the album, marked by a haunted post-post rock/trip hop quality that suggests a very real and possibly best avoided darkness on the edge of town. What these songs are a prelude to remains to be seen. Take them as they stand as examples of some very distinct (other)world making.