Assassins is a displacement from the West German brutalism and Cold War bleakness – industrial wastelands and all – that’s usually associated with low key synthesisers and half buried hyperactive drum machines (muted by their very energetic nature).  Here the aural aesthetic is tied to the story of the Hashshashin, the Nizai Ismailis tarred by their adversaries as trained killers (thanks wikipedia).  Professor Genius has sculpted an album based around the last survivor of the mythical Cult of Assassins.

With the heart of their sect in the mountain fort of Alamut, a fortress eventually overrun by the Mongols in 1256, Assassins provides the soundtrack to the cracking of the dawn sun against the barren peaks, the stone fortress submerged in shadow beneath.  The Hashshashin recaptured their home fort in 1275 but only for a few months.  This is the sound of their fragile re-occupation, all impermanence and mystic desolation.  A mist of despair hangs above all of this – the same displacement found in the Cold Wave progenitors of this sound: divided from each other by ideology.

Professor Genius – Assassins

Professor Genius’s beautiful ‘machine music’ is available on his Soundcloud here where you can hear his unreleased album about the last member of the ‘Cult of Assassins’.

Gold Blood‘s Hardcore/Synthpop hybrid was thrust into my palms by the seer of Edgeworld on one of my too infrequent journeys into the realm of racked vinyl.  Being encased in a plain black sleeve with nearly illegible gold on black writing on the inner sticker, the record held out that rare mystique (in a world of ID3 tags) of something unclassifiable odd.  For the marrying of Arab on Radar style vocals to, what I guess we’re calling Cold Wave now, was quite unlike anything we’d heard before.  Or rather it was very like two things we’d heard before but sewn together into some strangely agreeable whole.

Some judicious tilting of the record in the light revealed it as Gold Blood’s debut EP, Twilight Language.  6 tracks of synth-punk (in possibly the purest deployment of that genre tag) with the 5th, Hair being the stand-out.  Temporarily adopting a Mark E Smith, sing speak drawl Emile Bojesen is at his most alluring, dragging you close enough to be assaulted by the 24 Track Loop that mutates into a glitching synth-scape by the chorus.  Treading a fascinating line between Hardcore, Syhtn-pop and the cut-up breakbeats of mid-90s Warp, the focus shifts so frequently but so seamlessly that Emilie’s vocal is free to worm its way through you unopposed.  Strangely sinister music then, especially the “beautiful”…

Gold Blood – Hair

Gold Blood’s EP, Twilight Language, is out on Human Shield right now and available from all good record shops, physical or otherwise.