Troth's increasingly prolific Cooper Bowman shows up with yet another long-player to his name, a collaboration that also marks the return of another shop favourite, David Nein Rodere. The cross-continent communal approach doesn't end there, either, as we're treated to a string of guest appearances from Troth's other half, Amelia Besseny, Neutral's Sofie Herner, Jon Collin, Yuta Matsumura, and the always delightful Sarah Pickles (remember her show-stealing cameo on Thorn Valley? Golden). For the right set of ears, that's a veritable who's who of what's what right now, and Rules For Living certainly delivers on the reputation of the names involved, a phantasmagoric unspooling of smoke plume dub sonics, post post-punk austerity, and dreampop drone. With this number of different voices involved, there's always the risk of slipping into incoherence, but Bowman and Rodere are adept enough at steering the ship to know that you can make a virtue of these things also. Which isn't so much to say that Rules For Living lacks focus as it is purposefully freewheeling, simultaneously expressing the dissociative aesthetic that's been central to their respective work for some time now as well as showing off the range of talent and ideas existent in their shared collective underground. And don't take such things for granted - even like-minded people aren't always aware they're facing the same direction: it takes another agent to help direct the light (no surprise, then, that Bowman is involved given his ceaseless work running the Altered States Tapes imprint). In that sense, CD3's uniting of the geographically disparate but emotionally linked provides a truly effective scene-surveying snapshot of what's lurking in the worldwide undergrowth - may it forever grow fecund. With endeavours such as this, it's given every chance.
FFO: Loopsel, Troth, Monokultur, Schatterau, Windows, Voice of America-era Cabaret Voltaire
CD3 - Rules For Living
£24.00
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