Static Cleaner Lost Reward - Breathing Under Honey LP (Pre-order)

PRE-ORDER --- AVAILABLE MID-JULY

Previously released on Low Company in 2023, now back... a weirdo lo fi gem

The sixteenth and final release on Low Company Records is Static Cleaner Lost Reward’s gonzo dub-pop melter Breathing Under Honey. An aquatic ruin zone of echo-distressed, loop-me-crazy song-forms, zonked exotica, slacker-techno and crudely soldered, seasick cyberpunk.

This album - which has been finished for nigh-on three years, sorry - is just the latest expression of Australian artist Tarquin Manek’s powerful and inimitable gift/curse, arriving ten years deep into his career as major player, and enabler, in a now rightly revered seam of the Melbourne/Naarm underground: releasing an array of solo music (LST, Silzedrek, Static Cleaner Lost Reward); co-producing albums by YL Hooi and Carla dal Forno; playing in cult groups Kallista Kult and F ingers (the latter with dal Forno and CS + Kreme’s Sam Karmel); appearing on labels like A Colourful Storm, Blackest Ever Black and Efficient Space.

The nine tracks here showcase both a keen taste for timeless pop umami and a super-evolved grasp of mind-pranging dubwise psychoacoustics; an intermeshing of DIY concrète chaos and supple, locked-on rhythm mechanics that feels not so much futuristic as…extraterrestrial.

Lesser acts have built entire careers on songs less poignant than the semi-improvised, elegiac guitar-synth whirlpool that opens the album (‘Stones On The Beach’). ‘Submerging Emergency’ comes over like a Pet Sounds instrumental that's been heavily irradiated and then held forcibly underwater, growing gills and swimming off to join a shoal of coral-dwelling Ethio jazz(mer-)men. ‘Basic Trouble’ is mutant post-punk dancehall, Manek’s part-dissolved vocal trailing in the wake of a steamrolling, almost Maurizio-esque bassline. ‘Brigade Spinnet’ is shimmering new-age-outlaw noir, Vincent Hanna surveying the sun-bleached rooftops at dawn and dreaming of sleep. “All I am is what I’m going after…”

RIYL: Ferraro/Clarke, Jac Berrocal, Gary War, Peter Gutteridge, Swell Maps, AR Kane, Scritti, Smackos, Peter Gabriel ++ 

music & production by sclr aka tarquin manek
recorded in melbourne aka naarm & berlin 2013-20
additional production & synth on tracks 3 & 9 by yl hooi

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Naturestrip, Naarm, Australia write:

"purely physical teeny tapes perform an invaluable public service in exhuming static cleaner lost reward’s ‘breathing under honey from the heady year o’ 2023’, a slack-jawed riddle within the all-consuming enigma that is thee world of tarquin manek™.

few records command a reissue so soon after their release, the soil heaped atop the (sainted) low company corpse still remaining more than a little damp, but this one’s discreet-to-the-point-of-fury initial release justifies the flogging of the proverbial carked horse, boiled back down into glue for a fresh round of rollicking mucky. arriving as the last release on that fine imprint, ‘breathing under honey’ represents (obliquely, natch) something of a convenient summary of that aforementioned elegantly sloshed world™, condensing as it does the artist’s proclivities exercised among the sweetest of contemporary depth-dwellers, articulated alongside/within y.l. hooi, bum creek, carla dal forno, f ingers, kallista kult, under endless solo monikers…the fun never ends.

let loose here in a suitably gonzo/spellunked mood, the second full-length under the static cleaner moniker (see debut $mile$ from 2013 thru altered states) is compiled of delirious half-thoughts & riddimic gestures accumulated between 2013 & 2020, everything wet & awash with a fine sprouting of lysergic mush between its digits. the implication thereof might suggest something schlonky or amateurish, but fear not, prospective listener, for your ears are in the sticky hands of one of the finest shit-savant prodigies these times have known, crud-caked technoid shapes & blissed pop-glob nous submerged in sublime dubbed-out grog, the resulting sonar-pong shards positively chemical in their ability to simultaneously slant + seduce.

think: martin denny face-deep in a paper bag at the black ark, graciously fucked tropicalia, liquid dub techno housed in vat of spiked quaff, the skaters infiltrating urban tribe, lopsided + caked to the nines in glitter for the gutter.

utterly tranced, sumptuous/sweet & patently ill. a classique of this modern horror epoch if there ever was one."