Princess Diana of Wales / Thomas Bush - Live CS

Our love for Laila Sakini's enigmatic slowcore is long and deep, here presented at its most unadorned and devastating. Using voice, guitar, bells, recorder and assorted household objects, she manages to burn us to a cinder within seconds. Spectral guitar and dub-smeared, metallic shakes lead us in, buckling as Sakini's voice echoes over solemn, staccato bass notes. Her music isn't sedate or gloomy, instead sounding a bit like listening to just a couple of channels of a vital dreampop document, drifting, but never overblown or dense. "Free minds, free my mind," she mutters into cathedral-sized reverb; stately and intimate, made of real, special stuff. 

Thomas Bush's side is stylistically very different, but made of similarly raw energy. His vocals simmer in a slop of lightly industrial machinery, like some early Coil, or perhaps Flaming Tunes' totemic amateur dramatics. "If you're waiting for a sign, take this instead," he exhales as his voice saturates and bends unexpectedly. Electronic elements are sublimed into murk, accompanied by partially-tuned guitar chords. It's like hearing the traces of jangly C86 pop, rigorously manicured microsound and distant hillside folk in parallel, plumbing the moonlit air like the weird sisters' wooded vents. It’s startling, mystifying stuff, highly recommended to disciples of Andrew Chalk, Coil, Richard Youngs or Laura Cannell.