Review: Wilted Woman – Gekachelt

ANTIBODY.

Elizabeth L Davis presents three tracks that spill out of the lines they draw for themselves. Energetic moderation and rhythmic rigidity become barriers against which Gekachelt is constantly pressing, with tape delays and electronic extranea smeared all over the grid, skimming the edge of eternally-escalating feedback before ducking back down again. The two beat-driven pieces are on the flanks – the shaking syncopations of “Tin Dip Drop”, the squared-off thwacking of “I Don’t Know You” – while centrepiece “Gators” hauls itself up like a dejected evacuation siren, announcing both emergency and the futility of trying to escape it. This, in fact, feels likethe atmospheric through-line of Gekachelt. While those rabid FX and overdriven edges speak to a constant danger, the EP is also characterised by a certain black-hole-energy-suck – a baggy-eyed exhaustion, a fear so persistent that it starts to tilt into boredom. This is a tattered, eroded strip of police tape. The dying battery in the smoke alarm. The recurring nightmare with blunted teeth.