Shit and Shine - 54 Synth-Brass 38 Metal Guitar 65 Cathedral

Clouse’s last album Powder Horn saw him dispense with any semblance of a band which might have identified him as a traditional “rock/guitar” act and make a record for his label Diagonal on his own that delved into screwed-up electronic music, and sounded like it was recorded in a cupboard while someone continually fiddled with a radio dial. 54 Synth-Brass 38 Metal Guitar 65 Cathedral is an extension of this sound, and while this is a less viscerally confrontational Shit and Shine, it’s an album that never lets you sit easily while listening.

54 Synth is also a record that’s acutely aware of its faint ridiculousness; opening track “Electric Pony 2” mixes acid house with a motorik groove, but the sustained rhythms are shot through with fizzing blasts of synth and garbled samples ensuring that the piece’s ten minute length is always engaging the synapses, Clouse showing that his inventiveness shows no bounds. “C2-6” is another chaotic and involving track, beginning as J Dilla-style electro-hop before morphing – almost unnoticed – into strutting, frazzled glam rock. Bizarrely brilliant, it’s probably the best moment on what quickly becomes a sometimes enjoyable mess of an album.

The unsettling growl and cribbed Neu! groove of “Cowboy Hat” initially continues the promise (despite it sounding like it was recorded in a cardboard box) of 54 Synth and the drum-and-bass assault of “Goat $hit” is terrific but “Love Your Hair – Hope You Win” is bland rave again let down by tinny production and the aimless jazz skronking of the albeit-brilliantly-named “Writing Poetry On Your Forhead With the Tip of a Hunting Knife” is another idea that should never have left Clouse’s head. The record then peters out with “Egg McMuffin” which, bafflingly, is yet another track that lacks any semblance of being lovingly produced.

If 54 Synth-Brass 38 Metal Guitar 65 Cathedral was a blaring, ear-splitting record which required some quiet time in a corner to recover from I’d be very happy. As it is, Clouse has come with a handful of half-formed ideas around blurring genre lines and forgotten to give an care or attention to making them into tracks that live up to the Shit and Shine records of the past. Hopefully this is nothing more than a bump in the road, rather than a gaping chasm.