Public Memory is a concoction of damaged dubbed-out percussion, unfurling tape-delayed synths and sparse sampling - all strung together by producer Robert Toher's snarling tenor. This music is a kind of exotic crossroads between krautrock, trip hop and coldwave, with traces of Radiohead's Kid A drifting up through its floor. Veil Of Counsel is the first formal release since the band's March 2016 debut, Wuthering Drum and July's standalone single, "Gate At The End" . With titles "Verdict," "Afterlife" and "Ecco", its three tracks seem to create a chronology that in themselves perhaps mark the end of the Wuthering Drum era, as the band anticipates a second album later in 2017. Effectively, each track showcases a singular world, one distinct from the next. Each are different vestiges of paths not explored during Wuthering Drum, or maybe each is foreshadowing what may be yet to come, though Veil Of Counsel does not feel like a mere construction from the scraps left on its predecessor's cutting-room floor. These are ardent, earnest songs, crafted in colours and rhythms tapped right from the band's source; a kind of alien emotion that walks the tightrope between one part romantic, nostalgic - the other introspective and dystopian. RIYL: Thome Yorke, Portishead, Massive Attack, Carla Dal Forno
