Clock DVA – Thirst

The Grey Area of Mute

Continuing to give an avant slant to the saxophone, Clock DVA’s second album Thirst honed the predatory allure of White Souls In Black Suits and then some. The noir-flushed disquiet of “Uncertain” limping into a scattering post-rock pulmonary, Adi Newton’s voice a looming vulture shadow-brambled in ambiguity. This album is still a keeper some forty plus years later, typified by the joy-shaped Molotov that is “Sensorium” and beyond.

The scattering excitement of each track, that rhythmic stitch and diagonally spread… messy melodics which buoyantly stab behind the loaded wordplay. A sax-splattered stairway that goes all Hazel O’Connor snoozy-tune on “Blue Tone”, then opts for going all rusty gate on the dub-bracketed incantation that is the “North Loop”, handsomely be-speckled in dribbling frets and withering returns (a dark bloomed pleasure, gangstering your heart).

As musical crowns go, “4 Hours” takes some beating. My first-ever taste of Clock DVA has been a lasting one; it hasn’t lost any of its impact, an apop-o-calyptically suction entanglement of urban burn-out, all feedback-scarred and pawing away at a parade of despondent images — if only all pop could taste this delicious I’d be more of a convert.

Elsewhere the interest spiders nicely, dreams attentively in curving discord and cut-in energie, smothered in a scattered-halfling sketchpad of clashing textures that draws far’n’wide. The fuzzed flicker funk of “Moments” and its hypnotic word-spirals, the This Heat-like floatations of “Impressions Of African Winter” flushing towards ever-tauter outcomes.

A really enjoyable listen, the tag-ons adding an essential live essence to the equation, coupled with two 2026 clubland remixes of this album’s standouts that feel a bit too squeaky-clean in comprehension to the misrule of the main feast. A tiny minor in an otherwise worthy revisit.

Here’s to more triumphs from their discography getting unearthed in the coming years.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-