Beginning with tape experimentation, noise excursions, long-form drift and drone musics, Love Cult have steadily built up a discography based on decomposing and deconstructing. «Know» EP is the first vinyl statement that sees the Russian duo dive headlong into beat-forms and movement music.
Following their fog-covered debut LP on Public Information, Anya Kuts and Ivan Zoloto have swerved the spread-out spaciousness and primitive rhythm debris and reached for crucial, crude dub and techno templates. Ghostly remnants still pervade «Know» – Kuts’ heavily-processed vocals are still in evidence – but with the adoption of distorted kick drums, off-kilter sub-basslines and compressed melodic strands, this Love Cult is more vital, more transformative. Recently the Karelian duo have coined the apt term «no tech», which stands for «northern technology». Terrifying opener «Mise En Abyme» is the bridge between older Love Cult and the new forms – massive, trawling chords barely contained by a rolling beat and cut-up vocals, like Sunn O))) lost in a lightless nightclub. «My Boy» breaks into an alternate-universe Garage rhythm, perverting the groove with ecclesiastical reverb drones and stabbing bass. The push and pull of «Lust Undone», like a possessed drum machine transmitting the death rattle of the recently deceased, gives way to the closing, epic «It’s True». Perhaps the most straight-forward offering and undoubtedly one of Love Cult’s strongest moments, «It’s True» uses bass-bin shattering tones, quick-fire high hats and end-of-the-world noise injections to truly shatter the perceptions of the listener.
