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Ali Robertson’s Ludd Quest – Food Fae Other Towns (Chocolate Monk) / Usurper and Sticky Foster (Chocolate Monk) / Brittle Hammer Trio – Opportunity Kn

4 stars
Three slices of Edinburgh avant-auteur and one half of vocal slapstick duo Usurper Ali Robertson’s collaborative pursuits finds a self-titled soundclash with A-Band absurdist Foster mixing live splutter with soundfiles recorded in Bogota and Edinburgh. The three-way split between Robertson, Peeeseye percussionist Fritz Welch and Muscletusk/Dead Labour Process smash and gab merchant Euan Currie is a live document of some singularly intense variety. More reflective is Robertson’s solo effort, in which a vocal melding of consonant and vowel sounds and domestic clatter finds Robertson’s own tinnitus making sense of a fading world, as going deaf for a living sounds oddly poignant.

the List, November 2010

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