Klein – marked

Usually navigating the nooks and crannies of South London through smeared and distanciated sound collages which wrap together windswept, late night street recordings, organ drones and smudged tomes of R&B, for her latest album Klein blows the doors open by trading her liminal stock-in-trade for the rawest and scuzziest sheathes of guitar feedback.

Harmattan delivered an off-kilter and arms-length take on contemporary classical music, Cave in the Wind summoned up spectres from the furore over the repeal of Roe v. Wade, with the lengthy ‘Faith in a Minor’ foregrounding media snippets before tautly whirring strings, the dying fall of steam train whistles and a smatter of church bells elided the sacred and the secular while the evocative vamps of ‘top shotta’ wound up in a blackened aether after first wheezing all of the way into the red, and touched by an angel bore its cherubic aspect through a diverse scrap bag of sodden gospel and keening soul, inspired by the nineties CBS television drama with features from kindred spirits in Matana Roberts and Khush.

For a few seconds marked seems in keeping with some of these records, as ‘winner’s clause’ opens through a twinkling of bar lounge keys, yet instead of a warbling croon and just as wind instruments would seem to elevate the ambiance, a distorted guitar comes barrelling out of the murk. On the standout ‘gully creepa’ those shards are honed to a point, with mauling and lacerating feedback over the revving of motor engines giving way to a carnivalesque throb of power chords, and on ‘Blow the Whistle’ industrial spurts with foghorn blasts in the middle distance are overawed by pummelling drums, with the result landing somewhere between skittering electroclash and the bark of power electronics.

The album intersperses lengthier blasts with brief interludes like ‘afrobeat weekender’, whose vocal spatter and craggy strums are subsumed by spooky swirls of Mellotron-like synthesizer. From squealing guitar and the enveloping static, ‘(breaking news)’ repeats its title at various pitches, chopped and screwed over a caterwaul of faux-radio chatter which sounds like a broadcast department being flushed down the toilet, carving out enough space for a cavernous and stomping brand of rock and roll which turns the titular phrase into a mere front-of-the-T-shirt slogan, a scrolling chyron shorn of any informational content as Klein pounds her kick drums and wailing distortions through a wall of concrete. When the dust settles an automaton repeats the phrase ‘breaking news’ again as though in an echo chamber, while a sniffly voice underneath whimpers the line like an addict despairing as to the whereabouts of their next fix.

‘season two’ boasts a rockabilly swagger, and ‘nightwatch’ buries a pleading vocal which ponders ‘what’s the meaning?’ over a screeching yet forestalled metal riff. Rounding the mid-point of the record, on ‘more than like’ plunging and waterlogged keys signal a dolorous downpour without ever approaching the emotional tonic, and with a disquieting whir on the margins of the track, while ‘enemy of the state’ layers its menace, leaning back into dark ambient and the industrial depths.

Lost down the back of the sofa or in a stygian chasm somewhere between The Verve and ‘Take Pills’ from Panda Bear’s looped classic Person Pitch, the track ‘drugs won’t work (like mother like son)’ moves with a spectral stagger and ‘frontin’ contains a warbling yet heartfelt vocal which wonders (through deep sighs) the reason why. Then ‘ruthless (amnesia cleared)’ threatens to really go off the rails, a rambunctious blurring of genres which loiters somewhere between death metal growls, trap beats and the dembow before finally sputtering out.

‘the gift of sofiat’ lingers momentarily in the charred remains before ascending the firmament, sounding like a godly invocation, a summoning or some other interstitial rite before Klein reveals herself as the wizard behind the curtain. On the curt ‘neek’ featuring La Timpa the pair sing ‘everybody wants to be the cool kid until they get’ with a clap, before marked draws to an inspired close with the semi-autobiographical ‘exclusive’, which repurposes lyrics from the celestial touched by an angel opener ‘black famous’ and is carried by a couple of amplified and distorted main cries as Klein spits over scudding beats.