WERKBUND - Scalpafloi

For a moment it seemed like it would not be possible but here we somehow are with the new Werkbund in hand and a jaw to lift off the floor. Skalpafloi is the first Werkbund record in 14 years and finds the shadow-dwelling German outfit in especially synapse-burning form. There will, in short, be no dulling of edge of the Werkbund blade. Given their long-standing interest in the sea and mariners tales, let's make the obvious assumption that the title is a reference to the Scapa Flow, a body of water just off the Orkney Islands that's become a famed diving location due to the wrecks of a German World War I fleet that litter its shallow depths. The music feels thematically on point, similarly haunted and sunken, charged with a static-y hiss of paranoia and psychoactive murmurming that signals that all might not be well (spoiler: it is not). This feels a part way removed from Werkbund's 21st century output, a burned set of arrangements arguably more in line with the time-washed drone exorcisms and post-industrial disturbances of Skagerrak and Rungholt. But time is no simple line in this world, and Werkbund continue to present as a sonic equivalent to Sebald, an inverted spiral of memory's wraiths that does a good job of flattening history with each sonic expulsion. It seems as if past, present, or future is rendered as one in Werkbund's hidden, maddening depths. Edition of 500.