The taut “Consent” flies straight in there, slams you with a jaded jazzation that hints of the trajectory their next full-length would take. As if you taste a prototype of “4 Hours” in those insanely satisfying swollen and squealing saxophonics and funked up wah-athons. Not to mention the deranged Elvis that Mr Newton is attempting to channel. Why this cracker never became a single in its own right is anybodies guess.
A discoloured ambience that continues on “Still / Silent”, Adi Newton’s words running like condensation, nyloning nihil-dismal to a sliver of distorted shapes. A track that links arms with the musique concrète cascade of “Non” – like some honeyed halo knotting up in a shadowy car-park. A strange acidic undressing of contorting buzz and slurry moan that has that oozy avant forty watt slant I just can’t get enough of.
“Relentless” picking up the post-punk mantle “Consent” gave out early on, recaptured on a solid slice of guitar / synth graze, psychologically skewered on Adi’s impassioned delivery. The sputtering genius that is “Contradict” kindling that lovely saxophonic itch that infects this album’s rich and varied ways. Here rummaging messily around yr head, spiking the blunt hiccuping guitar in jolting eclectics, sliding and driving Adi’s random unravelings. Slowing it all down on the eerie spiderings of the film soundtrack for “Keyboards Assemble Themselves At Dawn”. The sax sounding very “Hamburger Lady” in places to abstracted moans and that mouldering bedsit dripping-tap thump that passes for percussion. Sounds all very make-do and undiluted, a rawness that tips into “Anti-Chance”, a track that pushes the “Contradict” waywardness that little bit further out there in a loosely structured, highly improvised decay of reason bathed in lovely tripled-up ectoplasmic reverb. A scrunchy otherness courtesy of some guestie action from Cabaret Voltaire getting down and dirty while recording this at their Western Works studio (in a single day, I may add!). What a blast!Four bonus tracks follow, carefully harvested from the same era, all adding to the main fest, particularly “Cage” and the very last track, “You’re Without Sound”, that sounds like a gothic B52s. Just a little drop in loudness us old-time tape listeners will totally sympathise with and something effortlessly resolved by an increased nudge in volume. White Souls In Black Suits is a welcome Clock DVA reissue with the promise of more classics to re-released in the near future.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
