- Like Downwards America before it, Jealous God feels like attempt by Regis to fill the void left by the demise of Sandwell District. And while Silent Servant's visual design (bespoke art zines and "artifacts" accompanying each release), plus the surrounding rhetoric (this is a label "intended for the mutants of our age") seems to pick up precisely where Sandwell left off, that's certainly no bad thing.
The label's "music director," James Ruskin, hasn't ventured a solo release in three years, and it seems he's done some housecleaning in that time. Gone is the thunderous Berghain minimalism of 2009's Sabre or the Ostgut Ton-released "Graphic" in favour of something slyer. Opener "Into A Circle"—last heard on Sandwell District's fabric 69—is, if anything, a little too subdued; the dissonant central melody pitches for a sort of casual malice, but in reality it struggles to hold the attention. Far better is "The Nature Of Our Hurting," where woody, off-grid percussion tugs at the seams of a metronomically straight synth line—a fine peaktime track were it not for the sleepy chords scudding across its surface.
Structurally, this EP echoes the first Jealous God release by interspersing its dance floor offerings with gloomy beatless interludes. Ruskin's are brief but unashamedly grandiose numbers, riffing on the faded-gothic theme of his Stellate contribution "Cast Down." The churchy "Excerpt 3" is probably the best, reaching almost Tim Hecker levels of gorgeousness. The EP's two sides are brought together in closer "What Falls To The Ground," a glitch-riddled electro stepper beset by billowing clouds of orchestral matter. It's marvelously evocative—though a cynic might point out that Autechre's Amber got there two decades earlier.
TracklistA1 Into A Circle
A2 Excerpt One
B1 Excerpt Two
B2 The Nature Of Our Hurting
B3 Excerpt Three
B4 What Falls To The Ground