- Churches, Schools And Guns opens with a grand flurry of terrifying electronic dissonance called "The Horror." That tells you exactly where Lucy is currently at. For the first seven tracks here, the mood is bleak and the pace is predominantly slow as the Berlin-based Italian expresses through techno the themes of alienation implicit in his track titles. However, for all its sincerity and compositional skill, and for all that tracks like "The Self As Another" taunt you to try and unlock their chilly mystery, the first half of Luca Mortellaro's second album feels emotionally locked-in, coolly impenetrable. Where Kerridge carries a similar tone of despair with power, or Dozzy communicates existential angst with romantic grandeur, Churches, Schools And Guns is dry, so bereft of hope or even anger that it becomes a deeply oppressive listen.
Then, suddenly, in the extraordinary "The Illusion of Choice," the album bursts into life. Rough as sandpaper but outrageously fun, this banger has a Brazilian shimmy in its hips, its deep, elastic bass loop propelling a top-line of evocative, ethereal bleeps. Like Tobias's "Skippy," it's a perfect, ultra-repetitive piece of slowly-blooming techno that lasts for nine minutes but could hold you spellbound for 40. The next track, "We Live As We Dream," is even better: all glacial grace and quicksilver percussive arrhythmia, it recalls Autechre at their most beautiful.
Had those two been released on an EP with "All That Noise" (Gas meets Perc) and the deliciously strange "The Best Selling Show" (think: a drugged fairground organist being remixed live by Aphex Twin), we may have had a heartbreaking work of staggering techno genius. As it is, Churches, Schools And Guns offers only tantalising flashes of Lucy's true range.
Tracklist01. The Horror
02. Leave Us Alone
03. The Self As Another
04. Human Triage
05. Laws and Habits
06. Follow The Leader
07. Catch Twenty Two
08. The Illusion Of Choice
09. We Live As We Dream
10. All That Noise
11. The Best Selling Show
12. Falling feat. Emme