Russell Haswell is a restlessly forward-thinking, multi-disciplinary artist, performer and curator. With a background steeped in computer music, black metal, noise, techno and solo improvisation, his practice is renowned for broaching the extremities of visual and sonic arts. He’s performed in noted live and HDJ [hard disc jockey] actions with Aphex Twin, Gescom, Pan Sonic and Masami Akita (Merzbow), among others, and worked with Florian Hecker on Iannis Xenakis’ UPIC system in their Haswell & Hecker duo, whoseBlackest Ever Black LP is widely considered a milestone of modern electronic music composition—and zweikommasieben Magazin has been a fan ever since.
Reality Therapy is Russell Haswell’s first new work on Diagonal since 37 Minute Workout Vol. 2 in 2019 is a response to the continued absorption of real-time video feeds on YouTube in and around the Covid period. Across ten tracks, Russell makes connections to his youth, to a political climate punctuated by strikes, class-war and protest. “The themes and styles that I selected reflect what I saw going on in the world around me during this weird time that we all went through . . . The imprisonment of Navalny, Covid lockdowns and the shambolic government—I couldn’t help feeling the similarities to the 80s and early 90s, and so the music includes stylistic themes and sound references to that period transposed into a more positive and humorous light.”
‘Formed in September 2021, Hyppia is the sometime-collaboration between tw friends, Matthieu Robin and Daniel Magee. Now split between cities, the pair continue to come together for performances, each one different to the last, the sonic palette always shifting shape between dronal tones and exercises in rhythm, dubbed instrumentals and trance. Performances so far have included The White Hotel (Manchester), Stereo (Glasgow) and La Chunky Studio (Glasgow). Their first release ‘N’importe où, Hors du Monde’ is due out on Phase Group in 2023.’
Cru Servers recent album EEL on 12th Isle is part hexagonal lube-pool, part peatman’s gallbladder; EEL marks an encephalitic (onward) plowter for both of us. Like intractable flagellations hoisted through individual druse romps, staminate bleachfields give way to unillustrated gonging, in chiefly 12V 3A veinlets. EEL – acronymised in ‘pen scrape’ – decontaminates, in our eye, four key baronial globoids, expunging gladly by 5 pin toddy ladle. In the torrential burn below, head hair, jaw hair and clothes sticky, stinking and greased with black charcoaled remains; arms are held aloft, supplicants to a muse long rent from this earth.
