Peter Hope & the Exploding Mind - 20 Speed Metal Death Threats (2023)

I'm generally sceptical of both downloads and CDRs because there are too many arseholes out there releasing five noise albums a week by such means and treating anyone who doesn't fall over themselves to bag the lot like some corporate tool who should probably stick to BTS*. Happily, there are exceptions to most rules, and in this case Peter Hope very much continues to be one of them. This you can tell by how much care and attention goes into these things - each short run CDR edition of the new download being lovingly put together with artwork, booklets and so on by the man himself as something which will remain a pleasing object even should all the zeroes and ones eventually turn to digital mush - which is where the download comes in handy. More significantly still, prolific though he certainly is, Peter Hope is always worth a listen. Not many can issue five or six full length albums a year to this sort of standard.

Anyway, getting to the point, here's another one, and if the back catalogue is perhaps a little too eclectic to allow for anything to be meaningfully singled out as his finest work, it might be this one. At least I've been playing it a lot. There are twelve tracks rather than twenty, and none of them constitute speed metal, but the title nevertheless makes intuitive sense if you're familiar with Hope's approach to his art where ideas and sounds are bolted together with the urgency of a Schwitter's assemblage - no obvious concessions to traditional aesthetics and yet seeming entirely faithful to the kind of blues which was played on a broken guitar under circumstances of grinding poverty. It's mostly electronic, although doesn't quite feel it, revelling as it does in its own dirt, crackle and distortion. This is nothing which would comfortably accommodate a barcode - in both the aesthetic and ideological sense - being genuine outsider music - not the cute version, but the untamed stuff which resists commodification or repackaging as a consumer accessory. This is a free-range noise which probably shouldn't exist given the focus groups and how many surveys we're bombarded with on a daily basis.

The Exploding Mind seems to represent a particular focus exemplified by Hope's work under that banner, although in practical terms also typically features collaborators. Mrs. Dink and Glenn Wallis of Konstruktivists both feature on this album, despite which 20 Speed Metal Death Threats maintains its pace without sounding like the latest by various artists; and Warmonger - created with Phil Jones and stealing Requiem's malevolent synth-pulse from Killing Joke - is frankly a masterpiece.

Avail thineself of this long player yonder.

*: I had to look this up for the sake of making a contemporary reference rather than just invoking Rick Astley or someone else who is probably dead by now. If you don't know who BTS are, I honestly wouldn't worry about it.

Peter Hope & the Exploding Mind - Love is for Others (2021)

Peter Hope records under many names depending on the general thrust of the material, and this latest expression of the Exploding Mind seems to represent a convergence of all the different strands, bolting the gonzo electronics of No Scene, or even the Hot Crow on the Wrong Hand Side album, to the dirty acid of pH2. Obviously this won't make any fucking sense whatsoever unless you're already familiar with a few of these names, so let's start at the beginning.

Older boys and girls may recall Hope as vocalist for the Box and therefore part of that whole Sheffield scene. He's worked with Richard H. Kirk. In fact he seems to have worked with pretty much everyone at some point, and now he lives and records in a seemingly wild corner of New Zealand, at least judging by the photographs. The photographs in question often seem to feature himself building things out of massive rocks with his own bare hands, walls and possibly even his actual house; or this could simply be an impression I've picked up from the music, because it doesn't sound like the work of someone who fears either wilderness or the sort of tough, gut-busting labour necessary for carving out an existence therein. Love is for Others, wherein Hope collaborates with Toby Barrow, is mostly electronic - excepting, I suppose, the heavily treated vocals - but it somehow doesn't feel it, or at least it doesn't feel like anything politely composed on a screen. The rhythms, if clearly originated from some box or other, resemble a cargo cult version of techno formed from rocks, wood, and bits of metal smashed together - programmed with dirt under the fingernails. Everything is overdriven or distorted without turning into either death metal or power electronics, somehow retaining enough of an identity to reveal distant roots in acid house - and so much so as to allow for contributions from the characteristically excellent Mrs. Dink without anything sticking out, if you'll pardon the expression.

If it's still unclear what I'm talking about, I suppose we could call it modern blues via Suicide, or maybe even Chrome, nailed to a rough as fuck acid beat and probably recorded far too loud, which is why it works so well. There's nothing clean here, and it's sort of the opposite of vapourwave in that respect, but better than I've probably made that sound. I've always thought the traditional inducement to play it loud, as often featured on the gramophone recordings of my increasingly distant youth seemed something of an overcompensation, but it would be justified with this one which is nothing if not a proper window rattler, and should be appreciated as such.

Mrs. Dink - Death by Misadventure (2019)

 

This is my third helping of Mrs. Dink, and one which would seem at least as resistant to description as the previous two - or at least resistant to description which isn't me either repeating myself or talking bollocks. Death by Misadventure is techno, or possibly dubstep, or possibly some other variant I've never heard of, but an interpretation which doesn't quite repeat anything else I recognise - not lacking a formula but definitely fucking around with the established recipe.

Leaving aside whatever may be suggested by either the cover or titles such as Batshit Crazy and This is Gunna B Lit, beyond the pounding beats and trippy squiggles of electronica, I found this album had me thinking about landscape the more I listened, and specifically Islamic landscape, places with mosques and a lot of sand. I gather Mrs. Dink either served or serves in the US forces, which immediately makes me think of Afghanistan for possibly unfortunate reasons, so I'm tempted to wonder if she might have soaked up some of the ambient noise of civilisations beyond our own bubble; and if it isn't the case, that's at least how this music sounds to me. We have the familiar pulse, and throb, and of course the hi-hat doing something approximately familiar, but the rest seems to come from some non-western setting, melodies which weave a backdrop rather than pick out a tune; and while you could certainly dance to it, that's not all it does. At times it makes me think of Muslimgauze - although its nothing like so insular or obsessive - or Konstruktivists' Black December album.

Of course, this may all be just me and the sounds on this album just happen to be what came out of a black box on such and such a day, so I don't suppose it makes a lot of difference. Whatever the case may be, it's a lovely bit of work.

Mrs. Dink - Diabolique (2019)

Having dedicated myself to the arguably pointless task of writing about music and the attendant construction of statements such as sounds like Pink Floyd in short trousers if Gordon Ramsey had been in the original line up, Mrs. Dink's Diabolique presented me with a dilemma, namely that I initially had no idea what to say about it beyond yeah, this is really amazing, which would seem a bit bland as reviews go. Then, just this morning, it came to me by virtue of my listening to this album immediately after giving Cabaret Voltaire's Seconds Too Late a spin; and it came to me because I can now hear what sets Diabolique apart from others of its kind. I could tell it was something special, but couldn't quite put a finger on what was different.

It's techno and an absolute banger, as the internet's Gary Goblins points out on Bandcamp; so we're talking sequencers, squelches, samples, filters, four to the floor beats, and bass that gets you right in the colon, but otherwise it feels unusually organic with sounds and melodies which come and go like absent-minded thoughts. Much like Seconds Too Late, it doesn't feel programmed and somehow gives the impression that much of what it's doing is in the bits you can't quite hear, like techno at a right angle to the sort of thing with which we're maybe more familiar; plus there's a sort of eastern feel without it necessarily being anything you can put your finger on, nothing obvious. I suppose - to follow this train of thought - it's like the point at which the machines start talking to themselves, except it turns out that they're saying something quite unlike whatever we tried to predict.

To translate the above into English, yeah, this is really amazing, you can move your arse to it, and Classy as Shit - as vocalised by the ever wonderful Peter Hope is an instant classic, although not the only one here by a long shot. The law of diminishing returns suggests that by this point of its evolution, techno probably should have devolved into a squelching noise heard on the soundtrack of trailers for televised sporting events, but instead has flowered into something which almost eludes description and which apparently lives on Jupiter. Additionally, this one is a benefit for the Lambert House, a charitable establishment providing resources for LGBTQ yoots in this age of witch hunts and angry shitheads; so Diabolique speaks well for the future of the human race in more than just one respect. We need more like Mrs. Dink.

Purchase ye this minstrelry yonder.

Mrs. Dink - D(EE)P R(IS)K (2019)

Having followed Peter Hope down the acid rabbit hole, figuratively speaking, I now encounter Mrs. Dink, another name associated with the New York Haunted label and as such further evidence of its dedication to musical excellence and innovation. Mrs. Dink - whom it should probably be noted also has material available from her own Degenerate Trifecta label - crafts pounding progressive techno which overloads the senses with all manner of disorientating filtered clatter whilst keeping your ass locked firmly to the rhythm, thus overruling any problems derived from what you expected the music to do. Unusually for this sort of thing, it features that same blend of a light multilayered touch with something hard which once characterised the very best of Front 242, yet without any of the attendant testosterone poisoning. In fact Super-Mighty Pre-emptive Strike reminded me a little of John Barry, at least in terms of mood.

I'll shut up now, but this one is very, very good.

Get it here.