Martin Jensen opens 2020 with Coal Pit Zen, The Home Current’s first release for Doncaster’s promising Woodford Halse label
Having disseminated his prolific produce via the curatorial channels of Castles in Space, Polytechnic Youth, Static Caravan and Modern Aviation during last year, Martin Jensen starts 2020 by further extending his tour of discerning micro-labels as The Home Current. Whilst the fledgling Doncaster-based Woodford Halse might initially seem like a less obvious stopping-off place for Jensen’s increasingly-in-demand wares, you don’t have to undertake much background-checking to discover that it’s another well-matched hook-up.
Run by fellow Castles in Space signee Mat Handley (aka Pulselovers), the steadily-rising imprint has been putting out a series of beautifully-packaged cassette/digital releases since the autumn of 2018 – including a trilogy of compilations featuring the familiar and reliable likes of Polypores, The Twelve Hour Foundation, The Heartwood Institute, Field Lines Cartographer and Panamint Manse – all bearing the distinguished design fingerprints of the currently omnipresent Nick Taylor.
Community connection extensions aside, for Coal Pit Zen we find Jensen swimming back into more ambient-techno, hauntological and kosmische tributaries following the full-on dancefloor torrents of the still-fresh Palermo Traxx Vol 2 12” EP and the An Evening with The Home Current mix CD releases on Castles in Space, which closed The Home Current’s hyper-productive 2019. This isn’t to say, however, that parts of this twelve-track tape/download bundle would sound too far out of place in the hipper night clubs of Berlin or Ibiza.
With its rippling synths, snappy mechanical beats and prowling bass-lines, the infectious opening of “The Things We Did” would arguably go well with some glow-stick twirling. Thereafter, the collection coils and uncoils around various electronically-fashioned shapes and soundscapes largely familiar to The Home Current’s sonic world. Hence, the polyrhythmically-powered “Cat Flight” feels akin to A Certain Ratio’s most acid-house-dwelling phase; the mangled yet meticulous manoeuvrings of “Magnetic Mutants” and the title-track imagine Throbbing Gristle after a heady all-nighter at The Haçienda; “East of Love” and “Golden Motors” laterally revisit the early-80s clanking and pulsing of Kraftwerk’s Electric Café; “Bayonet Act” glides into spacey late-90s glitchtronica trajectories; and “The Dragon in the Window” steers proceedings to a satisfying finale by venturing into intriguing Persian-dub terrain that warrants extra exploration in future.
Although Coal Pit Zen is perhaps not the most accessible or distinctive entry-point into The Home Current’s rapidly-sprawling catalogue, it’s certainly no slouch away from the dependability and dexterity we’ve become so accustomed to throughout Martin Jensen’s seemingly-endless purple patch.
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