2LP
Blank Forms move deeper into their Shadow Ring reissue campaign with this first time re-press of the group’s first record for Scott Faust’s Swill Radio imprint, and perhaps also their most purposeful attempt to contextualise their work within the scope of a wider underground network. Whilst the band had collaborated with others outside of their core trio before, the union with Foust and his Idea Fire Company affiliate Karla Borecky, alongside Elklink’s Adris Hoyos (who would later appear on Graham Lambkin’s Kye label) seemed to make them even more determinedly singular - the most Shadow Ring the Shadow Ring had been to that point. Recorded at the mythic Coombe House, The Lighthouse proves an apt (if not indeed instructive) title, a kind of beacon/final outpost for their domestic concreté fantasies and hallucinations of an eroding United Kingdom - empires erode from the coastline in, and in Folkestone, they would have had a premium vantage point. The gurgle of Idea Fire Company style electronics runs throughout, but as ever, they essentially play second fiddle to Lambkin’s cut ‘n’ shut narratives that make both no and absolute sense - in a world as stupid as this, the absurd seems the only logical path. They are, of course, also supremely funny - you even hear the group laugh at times, though it’s unclear whether that’s instinctive or a part of the performance (the joke is that this ain't no joke…?). Wild to think of this record being 27 years old, so hard is it to truly get a grip on and I can’t really imagine ever being especially familiar with these songs - they always seem to greet you just off, as if new or simply *wrong* every time. That’s perhaps because on release no-one really seemed to pay any attention (it was to receive a single review, from it's label boss of all people), thereby cementing its position as some kind of unfathomable lost scroll. Even from the perspective of 2026, amidst a wider reissue campaign and a reunion, they’re still that most poker faced of outfits. Long live the inscrutable weirdos.
FFO: Idea Fire Company. Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley
