Following the album successes of Trademark Ribbons of Gold (Skam 2010) and Persistence of Vision (Skam 2014) and EPs Video Club (Skam 2009) and Midnight Selection (Skam 2011), Ade Blacow aka VHS Head is back with a new EP Sarah Eat Neon.
Showcasing his trademark cut and sample techniques it is a triumph of glitch-edged production and inventiveness evoking avant-garde artists such as The Art of Noise.
Blacow is known for his minute attention to detail and ability to sift through hours-upon-hours of old, warped and half-forgotten video tapes to find that one sample or 2 second snatch of audio to weave into his expansive and super-charged compositions.
Often his tracks take on the feel and essence of the samples he harvests whether they be from 80's promotional tapes, films, video nasties, commercials or television programmes.
The actual analogue distortion, tape warp and ragged phasing of these tracks are as a direct result of the degraded quality of the video cassettes he samples. It is all warped tape hiss and machine hum.
Championed by BBC Radio 6 Music's Mary Anne Hobbs and a much in-demand remixer, VHS Head still exists beneath the mainstream, defiantly resisting any genre pigeon-holing. Blacow still maintains a semi-mythical status, rarely giving interviews or offering much insight into his strange, twilight world of obsessive production.
It is fitting that he is a label-mate of sonic manipulators Autechre and Boards of Canada, both residents of similar strange and haunted soundscapes. Skam has persistently put itself at the forefront of experimental electronic composition and VHS Head is a fine purveyor of this.
Opener The Violent Breed sets the tone and pace. Glitchy, propulsive with an elctro-funk quality, it stabs and judders its way forward sounding like a trapped cassette wrapping itself around stuttering tape heads.
Live Intro 2K11 sounds like it came straight out of a 1980's John Carpenter film....which it probably did! It is pure understated menace and atmosphere with what sounds like Tuvan throat singing sampled throughout. Craven Hacked to Pieces continues this and could have been sampled from a 1980's video nasty with a drill buzzing throughout.
Cameron's Closet and Sarah Eat Neon close out what is a brilliant EP of sweeping melodies gleaned from what must be, at times, a chaotic creative process and auditory birth.
This is a skilled fusing of ideas and sounds that realises Blacow's stunning vision.
