Cassette
Another immaculately presented cassette from INFOrmation, perhaps the most intriguing and certainly most purposefully enigmatic label in operation in Greater London today. Sanctuary of Praise shares its members with the equally brilliant Living Rainbow, and while the two groups share some aesthetic crossover, SoP are notable for existing as a live entity also. It's from the live arena that the 70 minutes of this latest cassette are culled, various cut-ups spanning two years of performances at their surreptitious shows just off The Old Kent Road (i could never work out from the fliers exactly where they were taking place). Previous Sanctuary of Praise releases have stated an interest in the more blackened side of early post-punk and industrial (something similar, say, to what Blank Dogs were doing in the early years of Captured Tracks), and it's into the latter that A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall now sees the band determinedly lean, a slow-motion unspooling of 'dirty ambient' vibrations and pulses interlaced with brief releases of melody and propulsion, sort of like Zoviet France meets the Lives of Angels. Not a ton of new bands in London doing anything exactly like this, though you can easily identify a kinship with the Indexe'e incarnation of Index For Working Musik, which just goes to show how rare this kind of thing has become amidst the 6Musicifisation of 'post-punk'. Certainly a group and label to cherish.
FFO: Psychic TV, Coil, Zoviet France, Nocturnal Emissions, Index For Working Musik
