Raime
Tooth
Blackest Ever Black
/
2016
2LP
29.99
BLACKESTLP014 / Includes Download Code
180 g vinyl, gatefold sleeve w/ spot-gloss details, printed inners
Incl. VAT plus shipping / Orders from outside the EU are exempt from VAT
Tracklist
1Coax 4:11
2Dead Heat 4:35
3Hold Your Line 4:29
4Front Running 4:24
5Dialling In, Falling Out 4:58
6Glassed 5:15
7Cold Cain 4:58
8Stammer 4:48

The widescreen melancholia of their 2012 debut, Quarter Turns Over A Living Line, gives way to an urgent and focussed futurism, in the shape of eight fiercely uptempo, minimal, meticulously crafted electro-acoustic rhythm tracks. The DNA of dub-techno, garage/grime and post-hardcore rock music spliced into sleek and predatory new forms.

No let-up, no hesitation. Needlepoint guitar, deftly junglist drum programming, brooding synths and lethal sub-bass drive the engine. The production is immaculate, high definition. No hiss, no obscuring drones or extraneous noise: the music of Tooth is wide-open and exposed. The seeds of its supple dancehall biomechanics can be found in the self-titled 2013 EP by Raime side-project Moin, an ahead-of-its-time synthesis of art-rock and soundsystem sensibilities, but Tooth pushes the template further, binding the disparate elements together so tightly that they become indistinguishable from one another.

If Quarter Turns was an album that confronted total loss and self-destruction, even longed for it, then Tooth is the sound of resistance and counter-attack: cunning, quick, resolute; calling upon stealth as much as brute-force. At a time when so many pay lip service to experimentation without ever fully committing themselves or their work to it, Raime return from three years of deep, dedicated studio research with a bold and original new music: staunch, rude, and way out in front.