Bob Winfield "Against Their Ragged Mouths" Cassette (Crooked Branch Collections, 2024)
The debut release by Bob Winfield conjures foresight of an unnervingly singular future: the incessant beeping of steel overlords contrasts with the slow steady breathing of a predator lying in wait, making either path you choose to take the wrong one and every step a risk.
As such, tension is the name of the game here, and the distinction between tension that builds, and that which bludgeons is tread lightly as the tracks ricochet between chintzy boop and cavernous gurgle, between perturbed clatter and slurping swamp, pulling the rug out again and again.
Taking notes from early computer music, ambient works, and modern cut up noise, but sounding unlike any of those things, you're presented with a release that's easy to get absorbed into but impossible to decipher, a truly fresh and unpredictable debut by an artist finding his footing on the path to certain doom.
C22 w/ risograph printed j-card. Edition of 50.