- Perc has never exactly been a wallflower, and with "A New Brutality," he throws himself into the fray with added gusto. The lead track is everything its title promises, kicking off like a drum machine on fire and building from there with fusillade after fusillade of overdriven kicks and blistering filters. It might be the meanest, ugliest thing he's ever done.
Somewhat surprisingly, then, the rest of the EP veers in considerably different directions. "Boy" is similarly brutish, awash in distortion and radiophonic discharge, but it's also imbued with a lumbering funk that offsets the grimness. "Before I Go" is more in keeping with Perc's ambient submissions to the Stellate series: it's a wide-screen sketch for waterlogged piano and incidental rustle. But the record's headiest mindfuck of a track is "Cash 4 Gold," a bruising, machinic throb with a time signature that resists parsing. 5/4? 4/4, but with its innards rearranged? Your guess is as good as mine. There's a whiff of Pan Sonic's burnt-ozone atmospheres in its analog sizzle, and dissonant string passages sand down the edges. Raw and relentless, it's a nerve-jangling experience.
Tracklist A1 A New Brutality
A2 Cash 4 Gold
B1 Boy
B2 Before I Go