Salford Electronics

Salford Electronics - Communique 2
Tesco. Tesco117. CD


I decided to take a couple of noise tapes on holiday with me. If the mood is right I have been known to do some reviewing whilst putting the feet up and have indeed written screeds on Putrefier and Ashtray Navigation whilst enjoying the hospitality of the people of Rajasthan, but with hindsight taking two Hungarian noise tapes with me to a small cottage by the side of the sea, in a small hamlet of about fifty people, was a daft idea all round.

Its not like its the first time I’ve been. We go every year, me and Mrs Fisher. We enjoy the quiet and the vast almost empty beaches and the seafood and the accents and the locals. Its the first holiday we book and if you’ve not been to Northumberland before I urge you to do so.

Which got me to thinking that noise has its place and its definitely not in a cottage in Boulmer. We may have been an hours drive north of Newcastle and the home to many a noise outfit but for all intents and purpose we might as well have been on the edge of the Arctic Circle [if I’m permitted the exaggeration].

So best to listen to Salford Communications within suburban confines. Which is what I’ve been doing this last few weeks or so. And while Cleckheaton is hardly Salford I feel that there does exist a similarity between these vast swathes of semi urban lands that sweep the north of England. Salford, Leeds, Bradford, Batley and Eccles. Prime noise territory. Forget Boulmer.

Salford Electronics is the project of ex Grey Wolves man Dave Padbury who, as you’d expect lives in Salford and while I’ve been following his sporadic digital only releases on Bandcamp this is the fist time I’ve had something physical in my hands. Communique 2 finds itself on the venerable Industrial label Tesco. We are in deep Industrial Ambience territory here, its where things tend to get interesting, where shades of simple 4/4 Panasonic beats are the pulse to shamanic Tuvan throat singing, where in-flight drone evokes dark sombre moods. The moribund gloom moves over these ten tracks like mustard gas on a killing field. Its perfect for Salford.

Through isolated moorland towns that are forever cast against sleet filled skies and tracks like ‘Prestwich’ with its street talk and footsteps on pavements and traffic and samples of military communication. ‘Cease To Function’ is a downward spiral of shortwave radio static and doom. ‘Broken Shadows’ is the empty aircraft hanger with Eraserhead playing on a 12 inch black and white portable in the corner, spatial, empty and decidedly unwelcoming. ‘This Sickness’ a diseased smear of industrial grind and rhythmic groan. A darkly flowing black and stinking Manchester ship canal full of knotted shopping trolleys and dead cats. You music de jour for your trip across the North’s equivalent of the Styx.

Its only recently that I’ve realized just how personal a release this must be for Padbury; Prestwich, Cease to Function, Getting the Fear, This Sickness. A brave record in some ways and one that fits in with the coming dark days. Just don’t take it on holiday with you.

   

https://www.tesco-germany.com/

https://salfordelectronics.bandcamp.com/