- It's easy to see why Tri Angle signed Peter Boothroyd. Grim and melodramatic, his brand of electronica sits neatly alongside the label's darker signings—think the Haxan Cloak or FIS's gloomy abstractions. Still, while there's plenty that impresses on the Mancunian's debut EP—its labyrinthine structures, its faded gothic atmospheres—you may be left wondering if it's all already been said by other Tri Angle artists.
Boothroyd's greatest asset is the way he treats chords and melodies, degrading them until they're more noise than note, resembling radio static or the distant shriek of a train grinding into a station. In opener "NYC," dense layers evoke the chaos of a dirty, overcrowded city. It's the EP's grandest statement, even if it overreaches slightly; you may find yourself exhausted trying to follow its ups and downs. Elsewhere, "Skinned" benefits from its late-entry groove, a twitchy, insectoid thing that supplies some much-needed propulsion. "Y5," meanwhile, inverts the same narrative, its bludgeoning cross rhythms slowly bleeding away into yet more charred soundscaping. "Colony" is probably the record's weakest track. Its scrambled percussion owes the largest debt to FIS, but in Boothroyd's hands the formula doesn't quite bubble.
Tracklist01. NYC
02. Skinned
03. Colony
04. Y5