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SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN - Fire Escape (Envisioned & Produced by Kieran Hebden)

SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN - Fire Escape (Envisioned & Produced by Kieran Hebden)
Smalltown Supersound
CD // £13.49
DARK AMBIENT / DRONE / METAL
Released: Oct 2007
Catalogue Number: STS134CD
Estimated time of shipping: 1-3 days

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We're all big fans of Sunburned Hand of the Man here having been consistently wowed by their plastic pyschedelia over the last few hundred releases (heh) so you can probably imagine our intrigue when we learned that the rabble would be bandying together to work with none other than ex-Fridge and current Four Tet feller Kieran Hebden. Well that's a man with his long fingers in a fair few pies, and we find him here playing with Keith Wood (Hush Arbors), Michael Flower and Bridget Hayden from Vibracathedral Orchestra and fronted by the unsurpassable John Moloney and Marc Orleans. However it's important to remember that really when all is said and done this is without a doubt Hebden's baby - although he is uncredited as an artist, he is listed as having 'envisioned, produced, mixed and edited' the record, so basically he made it out of samples of the band then... right? Well yeah, and that's pretty much what it sounds like, a Kieran Hebden album with a large friendly dose of instrumentation from our friends the Sunburned. Drums are formed into large, compressed breaks in the traditional Hebden style, basslines are brought out from the mire to create funky looping phrases reminiscent of many a cop-show and the all important tape-echo becomes an instrument in itself, screaming and screeching throughout the record. Occasionally Hebden lets the percussion take a back seat (as on the gorgeous Sun Ra-esque 'What Color is the Sky in the World You Live in?') but for the most part this is a breaks album, maybe the first New Weird America breaks album? And what more would you expect from Hebden, a man who defined his sound with the loudest psychedelic drum breaks this side of Tortoise, and who is famous for collaborating with, well, a drummer. The highlight for me is 'The Parakeet Beat' and it's here that Hebden dispenses with melody altogether, simply allowing Moloney's motoric Kraut-rock influenced rhythms take the front seat and layering effects over the top almost as if creating a gift for future generations of Stones Throw producers. Another highlight would be the title track which takes the band's love of Can and Neu! into another distinct phase with their most obvious Kraut tribute yet, all pulsing basses, wobbly synths, propulsive rhythms and analogue effects. While this might not be a 'proper' Sunburned Hand of the Man album, lacking the cynicism, absurdity and surreal nature of 'No-Magic Man', 'Anatomy' or 'Wedlock', 'Fire Escape' is still an incredibly listenable exploration of the band's style, an exploration forged by the hands of one of the most important electronic producers of the last few years. Very good indeed.

• Tracks on SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN - Fire Escape (Envisioned & Produced by Kieran Hebden):
• SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN : 01
• SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN : 02
• SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN : 03

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