In the realm where illustration and experimental sound intersect, Zeke Clough—long celebrated for his cult label artwork—debuts a striking new creative chapter with Protomurk Book One. This release, published by Castles In Space, enlists the cinematic sensibility of Twilight Sequence to provide a soundtrack that mirrors the hallucinatory odyssey traced in Clough’s graphic novel. Setting the stage beneath a deserted railway station, Clough introduces a world ruled by mutated mole rats and shadowy, mutable spaces—a narrative realized through both richly detailed drawings and enigmatic, glimmering electronics. The story unfolds across intense visual tableaux, each page inviting the reader toward deeper immersion while the music blurs the boundary between score and environment.
Clough’s approach is unmistakable, rooted in a love for the tactile energy of print and the poetic possibilities of the zine format, yet transformed here into a sustained visual narrative of psychedelic melancholy and playful weirdness. Twilight Sequence’s score, meanwhile, activates and extends the emotional landscape: synth textures drift, collide, and fracture, amplifying both the comic’s dreamlike momentum and its moments of contemplative unease. The combined effect is more than the sum of its parts—a meticulously crafted hybrid that pulls at the senses and the imagination, reminiscent at times of the synaesthetic artistry of Clough’s past collaborations for labels like Ninja Tune and Warp, yet marked now by a deeper narrative ambition.
Protomurk Book One stands as an invitation into a zone where sound and image continually swap textures, moods, and meanings. Clough and Twilight Sequence craft an experience that is richly strange but never alienating, laced with a peculiar kind of nostalgia and humor. The project is both homage and invention: fans of zine culture, British underground comics, and exploratory electronic music alike will find themselves drawn in, each panel and track revealing new emotional and conceptual layers. As the opening salvo of the Proto Murk series, this release promises a sustained inquiry into multimedia storytelling—and, perhaps, a reminder of how entwined our senses can become when art is allowed to wander the interstices.
