Sockethead - Harj-o-Marj

Youth

£21.60

CATALOGUE NO.: Y11TH
FORMAT - LP
RELEASE DATE 6th Nov 2020
Genres - Techno, Electronic

Track Listing
1. Genesis Redux
2. When I Close My Eyes I See Paint
3. Chaos Portrait
4. Love Loss Missing Yearning
5. Devotion
6. Synchronicity
7. In Search Of Truth
8. Jahiliyyah
9. All My Days Are Dark As Night
10. Weights Chains & Forgetful Rememberance
11. You Are Not a Machine
12. Hyena Clan
13. Gravity Stone Ally
14. Webale

Killer debut album of screwy soul blatz and psyched synth-pop - created in a caravan on the
Scottish West coast - by Manc bod Sockethead; the musical handle for visual artist Richard Harris on Andy Lyster’s Youth

Aside from knocking out scuzzy wee bombs like this album, Sockethead is a member of Manchester’s Return to Zero production/DJ crew with Turinn and FUMU, and also lectures in art at the city’s institutions. This should give both casual and keener observers of the city’s mutant, sounds strong context for the colourfully visual styles on ‘Harj-o-Marj’, which factors in heavy influences ranging from Detroit techno to post-punk, freak beats and screwed rap, to create a rudely shapeshifting amalgamate disciplined with the hands-on craft and tormented soul of John Bender, Graham Lambkin or Jeff Keen, and fraught with the nostalgia and lurking madness of life spent in isolation.

While Richard’s isolation was self-imposed as part of an artist residency in 2018 on the ruggedly beautiful West Coast of Scotland, its sentiment arguably, resonates with mindsets imposed by our current lockdown. By turns the 14 tracks move from a “pissed and lonely” Graham Lambkin-like collage of synths and cranky vocals in ‘Genesis Redux’ to psyche-celtic geometric synth visions in ’When I Close My Eyes I See Paint’, via the fractal junglist brainjig of ‘Chaos Portait’, to bittersweet synth-funk meditations on ‘Love Loss Missing Yearning’ and ‘Devotion’, and exceptional segue into screwed psychoactive crud on ‘Jahiliyyah’, plus thee crankiest cyberfolk song you’ll hear in 2020 on ‘Hyena Clan’.

It’s naught but essential listening for fans of Manchester’s best, embodying the misery and psychic bruising of isolation, but naturally blessed with an artist’s creative resilience and knack for transmuting heavy feels into rough gold.