“I think that there is just as much fucking going on then as now, only now it has a more perverted quality to it, now it has no love whatsoever included.”
– Henry Miller
I’m sat at the side of the school Disco, stinking of the black nail varnish I’d hastily applied a few minutes earlier, headphones firmly on, blaring a Joy Division best-of CD, my lips stinging with Salt and Vinegar crisps. My classmates dance in front of me, a perfectly synchronized Macarena. Every so often, the beat of the song, my song, will synchronize with their orchestrated moves. One of them will catch my eye, looking suitably disgusted. I can’t decide whether I want to fuck them or fight them.
From “I Feel Nothing” to “More Alone,” Tropic Of Cancer’s synthetic groans take on a pneumatic edge for this new 7-inch, less broodingly minimal. This might have something to do with Karl O’Connor, a.k.a. Regis, moving from simply releasing Tropic Of Cancer records via his Downwards Records imprint — a key home for that particular industrial, bleak techno style that gets called “The Birmingham Sound” — to producing them; while Camella Lobo has otherwise taken full reign, her former musical partner Silent Servant apparently no longer involved.
And though Mr. Miller above seems to miss those ways in which perversion and love can so often blur, “More Alone” has enough enamored synths swelling beneath its mechanistic propulsion to remind us of this fact.
As we’ve already mentioned, you’ll have to wait till September for the full album, while this single for “More Alone” comes out in August, just in time for Summer’s end.
• Tropic Of Cancer: http://tropicofcancer.bandcamp.com
• Blackest Ever Black: http://blackesteverblack.blogspot.co.uk
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