New Thomas Bush and what Lost Domain are calling 'hortical tekno', which is funny, half-accurate, and nothing to do with gardening (don't say you didn't have to look it up, too). Does that make things any clearer for you? Of course not, which is the Lost Domain way and a more than acceptable one at that. Bush has made quite a few different types of record over the past decade or so, whether under his own name, as part of RAP or, most recently, as cATHOLICCHURCH (and there's no doubt more out there not included in those listed configurations). If we're to make comparisons, Guld arguably lands closest to his affiliated work with Jolly Discs, a kind of after sundown/in-between hours downer techno-pop that feels deeply expressive of the mind-forg'd manacles of un-fair London town. Bush has one of those great sunken 'n' sullen voices that's almost in tune and entirely affecting, capturing that dual sense of both romance and despair. More of that eternal weltschmerz sound? I suppose, yes, and not, at times, not unlike Coil's interest in the haunted ends of the night, where exhausted narcotics and serotonin levels lead to a more inverted thinking. 'Excommunication', the pre-release single, is both literally and figuratively the centrepiece of the record, a nine-minute behemoth of pulsing 140bpm techno underscored by Bush's mournful vocal that finds some kinship with the SELN Recordings crew, though it's the more subdued 'Galver' I keep returning to, a dissonant guitar-led abstraction that could almost have been lifted from his The Next 60 Years LP from 2024. Great modern electronic music making that, like much of Bush's output, is highly adept in bridging gaps between worlds, both aesthetic and imagined.
FFO: RAP, Coil, Conrad Pack
