- Vienna's young Neubau label occupies a space in which forgotten old post-punk and industrial records are near-indistinguishable from new ones. (For the record, it mostly focusses on new artists, while its Wiener Brut sub-label reissues relics from Vienna's '80s DIY scene.) Neubau goes one step further in its best moments. This was the case with Leo James' What Happened To You EP, where compelling rhythm tracks balanced post-punk credentials with an odd airless funk. It's the case again on the lead track of E-Moon, an EP from an established artist working anonymously as Sheila Fleurator.
There's a time slip in "E-Moon," which could've been made at any point in the last 30-odd years. There's also a place slip in the strange monologue running through it, with an accent that sits somewhere between the UK, the US and some imagined class of stylish European kids singing in English. There's a slip of mood, too. Its surreal parade of images—squirrels, a "battle dog," the seas of Galilee—seem to veer between joke, threat and something harder to define. Underneath, bits of percussion and coarse synth coalesce into an irresistible 120-BPM slouch. "Sheila" drops the tempo for a pair of scuffed drum tracks reminiscent of Tolouse Low Trax. (The Salon Des Amateurs resident has appeared as a remixer on Neubau before.) "Jing Jang" is a controlled avalanche of kitchen sink percussion, while "Minimal Hypnosis," a trudge-a-thon, generates low-level panic with seething layers of arpeggiating synths.
TracklistA1 E-Moon (Food For Thought)
A2 Jin Jang
B1 Minimal Hypnosis