- I picked up Enya's Greatest Hits on cassette at a car boot sale a few years back. All the, ahem, classics are there, but the tape is so old and raddled that they sound all wrong, those celestial chord progressions warping as if transmitted from some distant dimension. Dead Fader's "In Cover" sounds uncannily like this—albeit with a frantic 200-plus BPM beat slung underneath. It's a juxtaposition of the ethereal and the aggressive that John Cohen has been exploring for a while, though generally not within the same track.
"In Cover" presages a dual album release from Cohen that will explore both facets of his output. Scorched promises to expand on Dead Fader's apocalyptic noise style, while Blood Forest will be a more thoughtful affair. This track appears to sit neatly between the two, though it's not Cohen's best work, mainly because the two sides of the equation don't mesh together so much as sit passively side by side. Two Blood Forest offcuts are similar, but slightly better. "Altar Ego" takes the careworn Enya comparison to even greater heights—its intricate synths periodically waver in pitch as if somebody leant on the tape deck's speed control—while "Hiphoop" is more brooding and low slung.
A couple of digital bonus tracks from the Scorched sessions cleave to the other extreme. "Ceaser" and "Mandel" are frayed rhythmic noise numbers with not a pretty chord in sight. Sadly they're not the precision-tooled weapons we've come to expect from Cohen, but rather ponderous live jams. There's plenty of promise here but nothing hugely ear-catching. Hopefully those albums will be more impressive.
TracklistA In Cover
B1 Hiphoop
B2 Altar Ego