Bruise Blood - You Run Through The World Like An Open Razor [LP]

The taxidermy parrot had been a constant presence, there on the mantelpiece in Mike Bourne's childhood home for as long as anyone could remember. No one was quite sure where it had come from - an heirloom? A chance find from an antique shop? All that seemed clear was that over time it had assumed mystical significance, watching calmly over everything that ensued. Following a troubled - and by some accounts haunted - sojourn in a museum, Mike became the ultimate owner of this parrot. There once again it sat, in his room and overlooking his home studio, as he sculpted music that took on unforeseen new dimensions. He pursued these uncanny vibrations right through to the creation of Bruise Blood's debut You Run Through This World Like An Open Razor. The consequence is an album very much driven by supernatural forces - spectral influence moving through machine form to summon grandeur and abjection both. Whilst Bourne's work with Teeth Of The Sea might give dystopian signposts to some, the soundscapes and explorations here - channelling techno, industrial, post-punk, minimalism and beyond - function to sculpt one singular vision. Recorded and mixed by Bourne himself and mastered by Amir Shoat (Dean Blunt, Klein, John T. Gast) it's an audial realm as redolent of the disorientating world of a Harlan Ellison short story as bathing in the relentless strobe light of a 3am dancefloor epiphany. Perhaps Bruise Blood's vibrant, excoriating debut is the sound of humanity moving with slow inevitability towards darker times, alchemically transmuted into cinematic serendipity and beauty. Perhaps it's merely the inspired work of one man, driven by forces he doesn't entirely understand. Perhaps only the parrot - the spirit animal still standing sentinel as we embark on an uncertain new aeon - really knows.