Cindytalk

Gordon Sharp's Cindytalk returns with another new long-player for the mighty Editions Mego imprint , a follow-up to last year's The Crackle Of My Soul. 'Up Here In The Clouds' might well be said to bear as close a resemblance to ambient music as it does noise, and while much of the record plays out as a slow influx of electronically cultivated texture - largely divorced from the usual musical languages of pitch and rhythm - there is an uneasy kind of prettiness to Cindytalk's new sound. Making for an enticing opener, 'The Eighth Sea' could either be based upon undulating, watery field recordings or computer-generated waves of static, or maybe both merged together in some strange electroacoustic broth. In amongst the piece's hypnotic motions a female vocal sample emerges (sounding naggingly like those heard during DJ Shadow's 'Midnight In A Perfect World'). It's an enigmatic, slightly tense introduction, setting up 'We Are Without Words', with its skewering drones, ear-tickling interference signals and factory floor knocking sounds. 'Guts Of London' offers another immersive, heavily layered and abstract mix - the album's sonic properties are always to be admired, in fact, pieced together with a thoughtful, craftsman-like skill. That's not to say that Up Here In The Clouds steers clear of the more confrontational end of noise music altogether: 'Hollow Stare' lets loose with a compressed, piercing screech of Daniel Menche proportions, while the throaty, trundling passages of 'I Walk Until I Fall' are interspersed with Prurient-esque atavistic vocal exclamations. Towards the close of the sequence, nine-minuter 'Multiple Landings' brews up a doomy intermingling of glossy, metallic drones, ratcheting up a general air of industrial dread. Any sense of ill will disperses with the album's closing two minutes (its title track) which sound like a mournful fax machine bleating out a rather lovely melody. Highly recommended.