I love the Oxford music scene. Scarcely a week ago, I was waxing about the boundless melodic invention of Miss Jessie Grace. Scarcely missing a beat, here I am reviewing the ultra-experimental industrialism of Mr Lee Riley, a.k.a. Euhedral. So uncompromising is this man’s vision, I’ve already had one reviewer refuse to touch the record, and he’s normally game for anything.
‘A Sea of Pulses’ consists of three incarnations of modernist hell. As in all industrial music, the emphasis is on the dehumanising power of modern technology: it’s not surprising that on all three of the tracks the various machines used to generate the sounds seem to be screaming in agony. The opening eponymous track creates an impressionistic vision of a massive mechanised ocean, with great surges of noise followed by regular retreat. If you listen carefully, you may even detect the call of seabirds and the rustling of gravel as the waves batter the defenceless coast.
‘Come Now, It’s Not Too Dark’ is more abstract, and more obviously culled from an industrial nightmare. Instead of the regular rise and fall of the waves, we have an unrelenting barrage of demonic screaming and computerised epilepsy. If you think of the nervous breakdown of Jed the Humanoid on Grandaddy’s ‘The Sophtware Slump’ you get some idea of the chaos unleashed by this vicious, pitiless noise.
‘And Now I see the Light’ begins with a recognisable synthesizer note (to Riley, the sounding of a note is a regrettable accommodation with commercialism and pop music) but that is rapidly overlain with six minutes worth of more urban horror. I thought I detected foghorns, guitars and chainsaws, but at this point my sense of duty has become satisfied and I’m reaching for Fleet Foxes, the Postal Service and Jessie again. So long, Lee Riley. You’re an artist, but your artistic vision is just too searing and terrible for me (and most others, I fear) to wish to spend very long in your company.