Clinker by Campbell / Mallinder / Benge

Crépuscule presents Clinker, a collaborative project from 2021 by Julie Campbell (aka LoneLady), Stephen Mallinder (Wrangler, Cabaret Voltaire) and Benge (Wrangler, John Foxx), now with added remixes by Gabe Gurnsey of Factory Floor.

'The project began a couple of years ago,' explains Julie. 'Benge had these great sketches that were beats and synth patterns, so those were the starting point. I really went to town adding lots of guitar layers and experimenting with different sounds. On some tracks the guitar is deft and rhythmic, as if mimicking sequencer patterns. On others it's a deconstructed noise-based approach - scratching strings, making fitful, heavy chunks, howls and scrapings of noise and texture.'

Due to competing solo commitments for all 3 members the tracks disappeared into hard drive exile for a couple of years until 2021. Julie continues: 'Last year we revisited the mixes and Stephen added his trademark mysterious and menacing vocals. Now we find ourselves with a finished piece of work. I thought of the name Clinker as I love its meaning: "stony residue from burnt coal". This seemed liked an apt description of both industrial and creative processes, and a nice nod to the industrial North of England.'

Stand-out tracks include Camouflage and Condition Collapsing. 'I'd forgotten how liberating it is to play bass guitar on something,' enthuses Mal. 'It compliments Julie's beautifully angular guitar, and Benge and me ripping up live percussion onto the sound of machines... As a collection of tracks these benefited from a lengthy gestation, as they follow no particular trend and were allowed to twist and turn to develop a life of their own. After successive cycles we suddenly drew it all together so the tracks have a sense of completion and identity.'

'The real fun for me was during the mixing process when Mal and I looked at each other as the rawness of the tracks hit us on the big studio monitors,' adds Benge. 'We knew we had something untameable, and wanted to preserve that feeling of edgy rawness in the mixes.'

The 4 bonus tracks include remixes by Gabe Gurnsey of Factory Floor, and UXB.

"A short, sharply-designed collection of tracks fermented over a few years, Clinker builds on Stephen Mallinder and Benge's previous work together in Wrangler and Creep Show, with Julie Campbell of LoneLady in tow. It's a febrile set of 6 songs, with much of it suggesting the anxious avant-grooves of groups like Bush Tetras and 400 Blows, re-tooled for 21st century precision production. Campbell's itchy, prickling guitar claws away at the slick yet sly surfaces of Camouflage and Influx, while Mallinder's vocals are as seething and dreadwise as ever. Tightly constructed, but rich with functional possibilities" (Uncut, 2021)

"Clinker is the progeny of another permutation of sound fuckers with Benge at the controls. It's a mini album, clocking in at a sprightly 25 minutes, but it fills the place with the reek of gasoline and the sickly pall of sodium lighting in its short occupation of your world. It conjures visions of decaying concrete flyover pillars, stained with the oxide of its iron trusses, and the empty spaces between them. This Ballardian grimness comes partly from Stephen Mallinder's voice. His distorted, disrupted evocations, contained in gaseous chambers of reverb and tape echo, are so identifiable with the Xerox aesthetic of early Cabaret Voltaire, and that sense of 1970s dystopia they evoked, that it's hard not to just, you know, go there... Clinker works because it makes features of its limitations - the signal path hisses of Benge's vintage synths, scrapes of plectrum on steel as Campbell's fingers worry at the strings, or the treatment of Mal's voice. Clinker? Corker, more like." (Electronic Sound, 2021)

Independent record label founded in Brussels in 1980.

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