An excellent, though not exactly unsurprising, collaboration here between Bruce Gilbert (Wire, Dome, etc.), Robert Hampson (Loop, Main, etc.) and Paul Kendall (Mute Records sound engineer). Recorded in 1993, the sessions sat unreleased for three years, but they still retain the exploratory vim, and sense of discovery, you’d expect from this trio. Both Gilbert and Hampson have strong prior form with extending the language of the guitar; the material here hews towards Hampson’s isolationist dronology in Main, but given greater heft, thanks to Gilbert’s noisier tendencies. It’s all recorded ‘through guitar pick-ups’, which of course, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all guitar, but that doesn’t matter, anyway – most sound sources are thoroughly alienated. The result is a set of iridescent, bleakly beautiful non-compositions that slowly build in flickering intensity; the anxious rhythms of “Us,” in particular, are propulsive and gnawing, a series of animal scratches against the guitars’ metallic sheen.

– Jon Dale