Beef Terminal - The Grey Knowledge (2002)

I don't really know anything about this guy - one M.D. Matheson trading as Beef Terminal, which I've somehow only just realised is apparently slang for a woman's area. The previous album, 20 GOTO 10, was sent into The Sound Projector for review about er… two decades ago, come to think of it, and it was chuffin' fab; and two decades have somehow passed before it's occurred to me to have a look and see if the guy did anything else.

I vaguely recall some loosely descriptive publicity material turning up with 20 GOTO 10, mostly focussing on the album having been recorded in Matheson's kitchen then musing over the mental well-being of the artist on the grounds of the album being distinctly less buoyant than, off the top of my head, Kylie Minogue's 1988 debut. Anyway, this one was similarly recorded in Matheson's kitchen and maintains the sombre mood established on the previous disc. One aspect of what drew me to the music of Beef Terminal was, perhaps oddly, the fact of it sounding as though it had been recorded on a couple of standard tape decks, one hissy backing track bounced onto the next deck with fresh instrumentation added in the absence of anything so lavish as even a portastudio. I'm admittedly overstating the rudimentary production values here, but 20 GOTO 10 had that sort of quality, and succeeded specifically because it made a virtue of its shortcomings, repurposing the hiss and rumble as atmosphere much as did, I suppose, My Bloody Valentine.

The Grey Knowledge sounds maybe a little more expensive, but Matheson has kept everything fairly simple, hence almost painfully direct in terms of raw emotional impact. Mostly it's sombre but melodic guitar almost bordering on the bitter-sweet, and I suspect a few of the pseudo-bass lines may be played on the E-string of the same. Rhythms, where provided, are either a cheap-ish drum machine or looped samples of noise, mains hum, or whatever. It's almost entirely instrumental - excepting a Eurhythmics cover, which probably makes more sense on disc than on paper - and effects are limited to a slightly boomy reverb here and there.

It's difficult to describe the nuts and bolts of what happens on The Grey Knowledge without it sounding massively underwhelming, and yet the sum of these parts is hypnotic, engulfing, and almost overpowering in its suggestion of tragedy, loss, and anything else which might reduce you to tears. If ever one should require a demonstration of the maxim about less being more, it's right here.