Conditional cassette / DL

Less shot through the head with a diamond bullet than being walloped repeatedly with a crystal hammer, Maria W. Horn’s ‘Excitation – Frustration – Excitation’ matches elegance with brutality in admirably brain-wrenching fashion. Tough kickdrums and serrated noise jags serve the pain, their unquiet digital gristle occasionally recalling Ben Frost at his glowering best. The title track is a fine example, its percussion stomping holes in the space time continuum through which pour gibbering waves of sleety, saturated howl.

Despite all that slurry, Horn’s compositions have a stony grandeur that impress as much as they terrify. Rapid-fire squelches, carousel synths and silky keystroke jabs lift things from the abyss, their textures nodding towards the disco, even if Horn keeps things awkward and arrhythmic. The clubby bleeps of ‘Voluntary Auto Intoxication’ sparkle in the spluttering backdrop like gemstones set into a cliff-face, while the steely, D&B-tastic tessellations…