REVIEWS [e]

EATEN BY CHILDREN: The Sword Swallower's Grave (SSRCD001)

After a lengthy gestation period, Eaten By Children's debut album is finally completed. Opens with superb acoustical sounds of goings on in a wooden room accompanied by an old harmonium creating a spooky melancholia lulling me into a false sense of security for track 2 where I find myself in a haunted tube station listening to the aeons of electricity humming down the tracks... I love this album, I've played it thrice through since London Rob kindly gifted me with it and it's a limited edition of 200 (I have number 14). The sleeve is a magnificent cardboard envelope with the enigmatic SSR logo and an etching of some old-time cops action. Track 3 is a grating episode of cutlery and glasses clinking then 4 is a nasty lo-fi abuse of ukeleli through distorters. Back to analogica-electronica for 5 with a freakily slowly gyrating machine rhythm cascading out crackle, whizz, whirrs and pops giving way to a gorgeous drone which turns into the sound of an electricity pylon on acid in a storm..hehe. The mammoth 12 mins of track 8 plays more and more on random extreme frequncy production and at time hints of melody. Finally the ultra-mellow 'music for xxxx' piano is the harshest of all.... All in all a serious and well produced album. Only moan is the title track isn't here but is on the Freenoise: Fusion CD anyway, if you managed to get a listen. Oop, just been informed SSG is subsumed within track 8 somewhere serves me right for being a fake...

Copies are limited to 200 and priced at £5.
http://www.statesanctioned.com