Kuedo - Slow Knife (2016)

Kuedo returns to Planet Mu with his long awaited second album Slow Knife . It s been five years since his acclaimed debut Severant and time has proved it prescient; its futuristic trap influence is now ubiquitous. Slow Knife seems to return to where Severant left off, but with the intricate sound design of last year shaunting EP Assertion Of A Surrounding Presence subsumed into the compositions, making them more exacting and beautifully crafted. Slow Knife is almost two albums; the first half, according to Kuedo, invokes the seduction of the city, taking the music of Michael Mann s Manhunter as a cue, with the latter half being inspired by the bloody starscapes and voodoo wilderness of films such as Angel Heart , Night Of The Hunter and more recently the True Detective series. Both halves of the album are also in thrall to Ghost In The Shell and Mica Levi s inspiring Under The Skin soundtrack, especially in the turbulence of the mid-section. The songs of the albums first half are synthetic and seductive, a gelatinous veil with shades of the pseudo-sophisticated trance of Enigma, of all things, underpinned with dusky unsettling shadows and atmosphere. In Your Sleep , perhaps surprisingly, features the vocals of Hayden Thorpe from Wild Beasts, who settles his dark, whispered vocals into the moonlit shadowy atmosphere. Floating Forest is the first track to allow back some of Kuedo sexperimentation with the Southern rap template, which he explored before it became commonplace, with echoed drum splashes and a sinister repetitive motif, ending with a haunting growl.

Tracklist:

01. Hourglass : 05:13
02. Under the Surface : 02:26
03. In Your Sleep : 04:28
04. Bending Moon : 02:10
05. Slow Knife : 03:55
06. Floating Forest : 03:37
07. Love Theme : 01:57
08. Approaching : 04:16
09. Broken Fox Black Hole : 03:44
10. Breaking the Surface : 04:38
11. In Your Skin : 01:32
12. Warmer Light : 04:13
13. Halogen Light : 02:13
14. Lathe : 02:28