Review: Ship Canal + Lenina + Splashy The Blame-Shifter - Bourgeois Kerb Stomp

I’m made to feel like a psychological experiment subject: emotionally manipulated by memories I never had, rinsed of all thought and knowledge, knocked unconscious and brought back to life, issued subliminal instructions from manipulated voices. The structure of this three-way split – which has me continually passed back on forth between each contributor, ripped out of full-body scanners and thrust into dark projector rooms – keeps me dizzy and conveniently pliable. No sooner have I lulled into the lonely piano and slide projector clack of Splashy’s “Petrol Station Homophobe” than Lenina hits me square between the eyes with a pressurised hose of noise and feedback, before Ship Canal hangs me within a throbbing, claustrophobic sack of orchestral snatches and mutant public commotion.

During the penultimate piece by Ship Canal, a voice dictates a backload of pizza takeaway receipts dating back to 2008: authorisation codes, locations, prices, the occasional flash of fond pizza-eating retrospect. It sounds gluttonous and obsessive when strung together; a chronicle of starch and sapped willpower, of grease and comfort. The voice spirals away and I fear that I’m dreaming the whole thing. It hangs distorted and distant, as I begin to bank turn toward a hallucinatory space station beneath me. Axis shift, rings of light, half-recovered techno beats. Lenina is on hand to flush my mind from thinking too much, resuming the blast of noise reaped from hidden sources (guitars? Microphone feedback?) Silence resumes, and somewhere out of earshot, I imagine my case study being collated and carried off to a laboratory somewhere.