It’ s amazing how switching a couple of letters around can turn a toy into something huge and imposing. Then there’s the spaced-out Electronica with ancient Mesopotamian lyrics…it’ s something that could only be the work of Current 93 figurehead David Tibet and, sure enough, the master experimentalist is back with new outfit Nodding God, whose debut album Play Wooden Child (House of Mythology) is a blissfully madcap echo through the cosmos.
Opener ‘Trapezoid Haunting’ comes out like the theme tune to Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy, but without the whimsy: the Godlike vocal, slowed to a fearsome crawl, introduces sampled patterns which make a melody in much the same way that Klimt made recognisable shapes. It’s beautiful yet sinister, abstract yet absorbing, a digital interpretation of archaic scripts, and is bizarrely moving despite the android delivery.
The bleeps and pulses of ‘Natron Skipping Rope’ create a sound that is the expanding circus of one’ s chemical nightmares: a sharp intake of focus before rapidly changing images fire into the brain from all angles. It puts every synapse on edge yet despite this, there’s a connectivity made by the odd word or a brief kaleidoscopic progression which makes the listener feel nicely cocooned. Wipe the involuntary tear from your cheek as the faux chimes of ‘Xanthosis Sabbat Clock’ (I’m not making this shit up) hoves into view like the more profound, elder relation of the Stranger Things theme: vocals occasionally reminiscent of Moby circa Play (Mute Records), and a tune that will somehow grab hold of you while your mind holds on to sanity by a gossamer thread.
Those vocals are like backward messages, yet like a friend they encourage the passenger the see this blinding vision through to the end. ‘Antimony Moon Fangs’ has an unnerving undercurrent yet those tong-like chants enunciate instruction warmly. Still a stray strand of melody kicks the bewitched victim, reminding them of the human traits steadily being lost to robotics. ‘Calcination Totem System’ has a piercing synth bedrock which carries harsh noise and a chaotic warbling which ebbs and flows into a symphony of unsettling bliss. The warps of ‘Salamander Candy’ are truly reptilian, a gradually pulsing swell reclaiming a sense of awareness from the dulled senses while galloping streams of energy fully enliven the mind.
Closer ‘Geometric Magus Breath’ is the universe talking back in code, a crawling euphoria-inducing the smile of a freed existence through a work of mind-shattering genius. Look, if you’ve heard anything like this before then I’ll recognise it in your eyes should we ever meet. Play Wooden Child is an experience so intense it truly reduced me to feelings of vertigo…yet I’ve returned a number of times for further enlightenment. This transcends physicality and all manner of description: don’t bother to try and understand what the flying fuck is going on, just live the experience. Breathe it. Be it.
8 / 10
PAUL QUINN