Back recording on their own terms via their self-founded Bath House Records – after a flirtation with Dan Carey and Speedy Wunderground for their January single ‘Casino’ – the latest from Hastings trio Borough Council withdraws back into a sinister, seductive mist, with an added dose of The Uncanny heaped on.
‘Strobe Lights’ is a brooding creature: The kind to obsess over at a distance; but who knows what might happen should you dare come close. Inscrutable and intoxicating, it might be delivering some kind of gothic kraut-folk hybrid, were any foolhardy label to be chosen. Shooting off with flute echoes, acoustic guitars and spectral melodies, the track’s object of hypnosis is a hissing metronomic drum beat that clacks on and on and on despite the intricate maneuvers around it; like the faceless regiments of motorway light that sweep by the black night-lit motorways – anonymous, yet guiding everything.
Much like all their work to date, new single ‘Strobe Lights’ apparently has no real beginning, and no definite end – just its own limbering essence: writhing, growing, flourishing, as if squeezed out of an alternative reality at great personal cost. It’s the sound of a band that knows that they’re onto something entirely their own, keeping their cards close to their chests, tantalisingly drip-feeding us the fruits of their experiments.
Photo by George Ackerley
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