Left Hand Right Hand - Hidden Hands (2022)

I was aware of the existence of Left Hand Right Hand back in the nineties and yet somehow they completely passed me by. I had a track by them on the fifth Impulse compilation, the excellence of which I noticed only fairly recently when digitising said tape in the hope of capturing the goodness before the oxide crumbles.

Hidden Hands gathers tracks from across the broad span of their career - some new, some old, some previously unreleased - and thus seemed almost as though it had been tailor made specifically in response to my curiosity. Its release also brings the realisation that Karl Blake has been involved, which is embarrassing because I've vaguely known Karl since we were both in bands we no longer enjoy talking about, back in the aforementioned nineties - different bands we no longer enjoy talking about, I should probably stress. Also, there's a Clock DVA association with frequent collaboration from Charlie Collins - whose work is always worthy of investigation, plus the drummer from In the Nursery back when they used to be Joy Division with cowbell.

Anyway, now that I'm finally up to speed, Left Hand Right Hand are intensely rhythmic in the sense of existing somewhere between Test Department, 23 Skidoo, Muslimgauze and records one tends to find in the World Music section. There's a lot of pounding, many polyrhythms, more than a trace of free jazz - albeit without the chaos - plenty of atmosphere and actually not very much in the way of electronics; so the disc takes the listener from crushing rhythmic force to market places in north Africa to the far east and back again. The most striking element, however, is how these tracks share a very distinctive common identity marking them as something apart from any of the names I may already have mentioned. Even when the most incongruous sounds are weaving around the massed drums, tablas, plastic tubes and what have you - distorted guitar, haunting clarinet, ambient noise - there's an epic scale as though everything heard is framed within the gilt outline of some vast nineteenth century landscape painting. I found myself reminded of Ben Hur and Egyptian masses grunting and groaning whilst hauling monolithic rocks on more than one occasion.

Better late than never, as I keep finding myself saying.