| Those of you who have seen 28 Days Later in the movie theater will undoubtedly appreciate the stark desperation and total solitude Villain Accelerate captures on Maid of Gold. There you sat, shoveling buttery popcorn into your mouth as Cillian Murphy stumbled through the silent, deserted streets of post-apocalyptic London, not a living creature, not even a rat, for miles. Before cannibalistic zombies chase down Murphy, you've already asked yourself what you would do if plunged into the same situation: family dead, friends gone, life as you knew it obliterated. Would you kill yourself? Wander aimlessly until the beasts devoured your flesh? Surrender yourself to evil? This debut from Sixtoo and Irish transplant/Sebutones collaborator Stigg of the Dump throws you into Murphy's shoes on this vocal-free venture. Lilting stretches of piano and druggy percussion crash headfirst into abrasive garbage-can scuttle as warehouse-rave polyrhythms and jazzy breaks give way to twittery bass. There isn't a trace of the glitchy, mind-spinning sequencing you've come to expect from laptop hip-hop - that would be too easy. Instead, Maid of Gold is a horrific waking dream of sound and fury. The results are slow and spacious, faraway but never out of reach, and endlessly haunting. What is too warm to be mechanical and too glacial to be human is, essentially, a steel wheel with skin. George Romano would be so proud. - Magnet |
2XLP/Out Of Print