Review: Sister Overdrive - The Shape Of Failures Past

There are the surgical forms of sound collage – assembly through micro-measurement and steady scissors – and there are those that fly out of silence like an uncontainable exclamation of punk or free jazz, too vital urgent to spare time for refinement. The Shape Of Failures Past is rigged with mashed words and false-starts, dropping gigantic bombs of dead air that bounce and buckle when they land; some feel like a sudden onset of sneezes, projected forcefully and ungracefully by spring-loaded impulse. The crack of second-hand beats, perhaps salvaged from an attic box of old techno and hip-hop (or maybe the cleverly disguised mechanisms of staple guns and screwdrivers?) send the pieces lop-sided through constantly missing their mark.

Yet through this implosion of impulse come objects of serious weight, slammed down before meditated caution can push back. Static writhes into my ears like balls of titanium foil, popping and punching dents in itself as it makes a frantic intrusion in my head. Clips of borrowed music (shredded guitar picking, warm bubbles of old synthesiser, orchestras twisted in Mobius strips) enter as reflexes gasps and the moans of sleep, chattering between themselves like caffeine-addled café conversations in dizzying overlap; everything is sudden and thick, albeit frayed and wonderfully asymmetrical.