Carrier: Tradecraft - The Body Needs Purpose

A stun­ning hour-long ses­sion of dank, high­ly atmos­pher­ic tech­noid alche­my that plays from the Pan Sonic/Vainio/T++/Actress songbook.

Key tech­noid shapeshifter Guy Brew­er chas­es a trio of aces under his Car­ri­er alias with the murky arrival of his Trade­craft project, forg­ing heav­ing down­tem­po slugs and vapours from a sig­na­ture palette of iri­des­cent elec­tron­ics deployed some­where along the line between Actress, Bur­ial and Mika Vainio, on a cyber­goth bent.

After leav­ing us reel­ing with those Car­ri­er releas­es that held up among the best of 2023, Brew­er tends to more sen­su­al atmos­pher­ic con­cerns on this lat­est pearl for the Berceuse Hero­ique tape series, fol­low­ing aces from Vladimir Ivkovic, Jed Bindeman’s Con­cen­tric Cir­cles and Pessimist’s Bore­al Mas­sif with what essen­tial­ly amounts to an album of new work. Over the course of an hour he folds bare com­po­nents into a dozen com­pelling shapes, ooz­ing and puls­ing with a tense ener­gy that ref­er­ences all those afore­men­tioned heroes, but also that late 90’s groundswell of projects that oper­at­ed around Berlin’s Hardwax/​Basic Chan­nel axis — most obvi­ous­ly Torsten Pröfrock’s Din label.

It also recalls the shad­owiest nich­es of Brewer’s work as Alexan­der Lewis for Black­est Ever Black, but toned with a poised, slow-paced nuance that defines his most recent work, patent­ly plot­ted out with an instru­men­tal sto­ry­telling scheme that ben­e­fits from end-to-end encryp­tion and absorp­tion. How­ev­er, For a short­cut to high­lights we direct you to the retic­u­lat­ed tre­sil­lo rhythm and lim­i­nal mid­night drone of ​‘1009’, the inclement con­di­tions of shear­ing, widescreen indus­tri­al air and goth­ic romance on ​‘Not Even’, and the woofer-trou­bling subs on ​‘Black Mist’. 

Cas­sette exclu­sive­ly at boomkat.