Polypores and Field Lines Cartographer bring together choice connective cuts for the latest in Front & Follow’s collaborative cassette series

Front & Follow’s ongoing communally-minded series, The Blow, brings together likeminded artists to share two sides of a cassette (and half a download) where they can collaborate as much or as a little they like. In the case of this sixth entry in the catalogue, the one-man operations of Polypores (aka Stephen James Buckley) and Field Lines Cartographer (aka Mark Burford of Impulse Array) apparently conversed at length about “alternate realities and altered states of consciousness” before putting their respective instrumental pieces together separately. Whilst it’s hard to gauge whether such original influences are truly adhered to throughout, there’s certainly a tacit otherworldliness and immersiveness that seems to connect the two artists with this conjoining.

Already having prolific outpourings elsewhere in recent and near-future times with Bandcamp-only EPs, another split-tape release with Gavin Miller on This Is It Forever and an imminent standalone album on Castles In Space, it’s a wonder that Buckley could spare enough time for the suite of eight Polypores tracks here. Yet thankfully he did, as these are far from being throwaway extracurricular scraps. Doubling-down on a penchant for meditative sci-fi synth-led soundscapes, the Polypores part of this coupling is often exceptional. Opening with the watery found sounds and John Carpenter-like foreboding of “Third Level”, Buckley prowls and probes into some shadowy corners whilst avoiding slippage into overly-oppressive gloom. Thereafter, “The Colour of God” skulks along with shamanic rhythms akin to the currently missing-in-action High Wolf; “Phylogenic Memory”, “Rapt” and “The Entranced” bring in mightily mesmeric Tangerine Dream-laced pulsing and layering; “Deja You” and “Cortext Complex” dip into dense disorientating Throbbing Gristle electro-primitivism; and the epic “Plasmate” splices together themes from the preceding seven pieces into one hypnotic whole.

Field Line Cartographer’s part of the deal doesn’t disappoint either in sustaining the symbiotic mood. Focusing on creepier sonics with some nods to 80s Factory/4AD and 90s post-rock on top of de rigueur kosmische and dark-wave tropes, Burford conjures some intriguingly imposing set-pieces. Thus, “Fading Qualia” could be a particularly dank Durutti Column outtake; “Modal Realism” and “Interference Across the Branes” drag Blade Runner bleakness through subterranean dronescapes; “Four Yugas” and “Echoes in Time” explore abandoned-spaceship ghostliness; and the closing “The Experience Machine” expands out as an unresolvable swirl of primordial yet sculpted noise.

Although the Polypores portion of this coupling might have the slight edge over the Field Line Cartographer serving, particularly in terms of accessibility, as a combined affair The Blow Volume 6 is an impressive and generously proportioned exploration of some carefully-crafted spectral sounds.

fandf.bandcamp.com/album/the-blow-volume-6

Adrian
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