Description
2024, 12″ LP, The State51 Conspiracy. Yellow/black ‘nuclear’ vinyl.
Led by producer/musician Dan Jones, Birds Catching Fire In The Sky is UKAEA’s innovative
and bold second album, due for release on revered experimental music label, The state51 Conspiracy
An adventurous response to the imagined, post-capitalist futures of accelerationist electronica, a buzzing, radioactive, charred monument from a notional, hopefully avoidable dystopia to come – Birds Catching Fire In The Sky, the latest album by the Dan Jones-led collective, UKAEA is a lamentation in an age of mechanical violence but also a celebration of human defiance and endurance.
The properties that combine to make up this stormer of an album are evident from the outset – each of the album’s six tracks showcases a unique vocalist, irreplicable in approach and performance, amidst concussive rhythms that rain down from all sides, all angles, as if unleashed by extra-terrestrial automatons raining down vicious beams, bass broadsides, metallic limbs stalking across a detritus filled, scorched landscape. The sense of caustic synth abrasion fleetingly recalls the visceral, deconstructed avant-club of Slikback or the electro-industrial music of Skinny Puppy. Elsewhere, there are reminders of the expansionist, psychedelic gabber of Gabber Modus Operandi, the transformative avant-pop of Arca and on “Habibi”, Dali de St Paul’s declamatory vocals, faintly reminds of Diamanda Galas, whilst Agatha Max’s violins resound unbowed even as the skies turn phosphorescent.
