Working in collaboration with Andrej Boleslavský & Mária Júdová, Samuel Kerridge presented Fatal Light Attraction at last year’s Berlin Atonal festival, a work which utilised sophisticated coding to provide a visual accompaniment to the annihilated techno and vehemently razed frequencies which have become a trademark of Kerridge’s sound. 

Reprising his place on Karl O’Connor’s venerated Downwards label, FLA heralds a return to the tattered barrages and titanic discord of A Fallen Empire. His appearance on James Ruskin’s Blueprint staple, after Always Offended, Never Ashamed saw forays into riper atmospherics. Although there’s less of AONA‘s diverse expansiveness there’s a consistently blasted feel to proceedings with a shuddering punch exacted throughout. It’s as if these tracks – numbered, rather than titled – have been edified by the imagined furore of a munitions factory.

A drawback to the unrelenting constancy of FLA is that it can at times become a homogeneous drudge. Kerridge fares better when he allows deviation and counterpoint into his accepted template, as on 1 (the tracks are all simply numbered rather than titled) with its venomously sunken vocals and 2, which accommodates a judicious midway moment of dormant pause before reassuming full blooded impact, like respite amidst gunfire. Elsewhere 4 and 5 are similarly notable, dominated as they are by arresting mauls of torn fuse distortion. 

Yet 3, 6 and 7 prove less memorable, adhering to more of the same devastation but proving unextraordinary as if their distinction has been drowned out, lost in the onslaught. Like the shadow projection animated by code, Kerridge’s sound needs a sense of contrast to play off for full effect. When that occurs, and it does for most of the album’s duration, FLA is monumental.

Tim Wilson