Following 2015's
Always Offended Never Ashamed, a harsh, abrasive album on his own Contort label, Berlin-based British producer Samuel Kerridge returned to Downwards for his third full-length,
Fatal Light Attraction. The album is far more rhythmic and less punishing than his prior release, but it's still an intense, paranoid work filled with shuddering, convulsing beats and scrambled, distorted voices appearing from corners. Kerridge refines his sound into something more immediate while remaining unpredictable and unconventional. The tense industrial-influenced beats are much clearer on this effort, although he often interrupts them with bursts of shredded noise or laser blasts. He continues to shape feedback noise into something halfway between a distorted metal guitar and a large power tool, and while it seemed like he was intent on leveling an entire building on
Always Offended, this time out, he sounds a bit more contained within the workshop. That's not to say that this album is any less thrilling, however. It certainly benefits from subtlety, and ends up being more suspenseful. The final track might be its most direct and punishing moment, with rapid beats relentlessly stabbing away. While not as suffocating as Kerridge's previous work,
Fatal Light Attraction is still a powerful, bracing listening experience. ~ Paul Simpson