Fuzzdust
One Line In Fishponds
Happyland
Uttoxeter Holiday Incident

Sandwiched between the leering visage of a grotesque theme-park effigy and a mirrored photo of a grim institutional corridor, these four new tracks from Soiled's Marcus H are as off-kilter and madly juxtaposed as their packaging. Building quirky, hypnotic grooves from loops and samples and never content to let a track go by without throwing a musical monkeywrench in the works somewhere, Marcus does seem to have let himself dwell on the ideas a bit more this time; the drones and echoes of 'Uttoxeter Holiday Incident' hit four-and-a-half minutes, a full minute longer than the longest track on last year's "Mindnumb"[read review here], and over three times longer than the shortest. But he's still not a man to let things linger on beyond what's absolutely necessary.

'One Line In Fishponds', irritating at first, is perhaps my favourite, mainly because of its cheeky splicing of a cheesy old funky-drummer loop into the midst of a humourlessly motorik beat, like a custard pie on the face of Kraftwerk. In fact, funky drums seem to be the order of the day, opening the EP along with a dreamy bassline on 'Fuzzdust', before being subverted by a post-big-beat computer-game synth line, and carrying the title track between claustrophobic, glitchy interludes spiced with black-and-white movie style incidental-music squeals. There's quite a catchy tune hidden somewhere in this one, struggling gamely to get out from amidst the chaos. Good luck to it.

ABC