Having collab’d with Seven on the tribal anthem ‘Karma’, Vision Z is back with two neo-cyberpunk alley crawlers in ‘Footsteps’ and ‘Manhattan Project’. Both scuttle and skitter along the cracks with barely contained aggression and early morning ambience – brittle and sickly hued light mixing with grey.
‘Footsteps’ opens with a hauntingly discordant drone, as elegiac horns weave themselves in and out of the drone. “I couldn’t hear my own footsteps, it was the walk of a deadman” mutters in an agitated voice. A squashed half-time template is armed with clipped hi-hats and a big room snare that’ll cut the dance in half. Quiet, barely there bass warbles teeter back and forth while larger darkside swipes scan the dance. Eerie synth tones flow out through dubspace like mists, only to dissipate just as quickly, the shuffling gait of the deadman.
On flip, the scene-setting sample on ‘Manhattan Project’ utters on the nature of all consuming mouth of God, “death, the destroyer of worlds”. I can’t help but think of the Laird Barron short story “Shiva, Open Your Eye” when I hear this track. Rising in neon shimmers as the Northern Lights do, electrical synth arch over head. Elliptical and rolling, ‘Manhattan Project’ surges forth with tribalist flourishes and that trademark snare. The sub-line coils itself like ’08 wobblers – subtle bass growls grow louder in intensity, however they are quickly eaten by Shiva, returning to the origin – becoming another hypnotic puzzle piece to ‘Manhattan Project’s’ fractal rhythm. It’s a more spartan, bare-bones affair which really allows for the mind to quiet and for the body to be swayed.
