autumns: suffocating brothers

Autumns is the solo project of Christian Donaghey, from Derry, Northern Ireland. To date, Autumns has been responsible for a brace of singles, EPs, and a mini LP, appearing on Soft Power Records, CF Records, Regis's Downwards label, and Clan Destine. Suffocating Brothers is his debut full-length record. Written and produced over the course of six months, it's an album that comes as a momentous and devastating fulfilment of what the Autumns project has outlined with increasingly ruthless intent over the last few years. Vocals reiterate like echo chamber death sentences, drum machines rattle and blister, clear-cut and sharp like broken glass, assaultive grinds of static and blasts of feedback suffuse it all like a ruptured maelstrom of FM interference. Yet, with this harsh sense of ferocity and obliteration comes a reciprocal compulsion for action and release. "I Never Noticed That You Left", "No More Luxury", and "Faceless" all tear into frantic, serrated analog rhythms surrounded by an anarchic chaos of corrupted noise, enshrouded voice, and blistering percussion. At times, these moments resemble the corrosive acid of Phuture and Sleezy D if their more riotous tracks were mired in the machine abuse of Whitehouse or SPK. "Female Model", "Forgotten Hangings", and "Limit Experience" on the other hand reveal the roots of Donaghey's initial inspirations, all shaped in different ways by a portentous strain of post-punk. Where "Female Model" is sinister and stern, a jackbooted dub from the void, "Forgotten Hangings" is Cabaret Voltaire's "Photophobia" reinvigorated by a new voice and a cataclysmic vision, formed of metallic sirens, plundered voices, and hails of climactic hiss. "Limit Experience" is a more fixed agitation but no less caustic, a monochromatic psychedelia for the streets and back alleys you tend to avoid. Elsewhere and throughout, piercing, cavernous gusts of drone augment the disorder, establishing an atmosphere which is at once stark and overwhelming. As a whole, Suffocating Brothers is a record unified by an extraordinary depth and physicality. Includes download card.