posthuman - "the uncertainty of the monkey"

like any other male my age, i have a thing for monkeys. especially when they're crudely photoshopped little refugees from the o'reilly publishing house and the titular monkey's uncertainty appears to be whether to hit this other monkey with a stick or not. this monkey's prehensile feet are dangling over an existential precipice, here. he's just a smack away from evolution, if 2001: a space odyssey is to be believed, and this is surely no coincidence, what with the evolutionary overtones of a name like posthuman.

really, it wasn't the cover alone that hooked me. posthuman have some shady relationship with skam records (they were featured on one of those smak twelve-inches that no one can find), and i'm still a sucker for that crowd, so what the hell. i'm so glad the cover was no indication of the music's quality. the cover is fucking awful, but the music is a habit-forming derivation of bola-styled ambience and crunchy, scifi-flavoured electro a la bannlust. the uncertainty of the monkey is a meandering suite that evokes a typically dystopic sense of futurity, a city where the robots are like vermin in the streets and they chirp and click like rusting cicadas in the garbage cans and alleys. quetzacoatl_grathard debacle accomplishes this very nicely, its haunting, almost ghostlike wail accented by metal scrapings and clackings, reminding me of dan jones' music for shadow of the vampire remixed by jega. really, i'm pretty sick of the dark future thing, but posthuman have nailed it as well as the future sound of london, another band who flirt with cacophonous excess yet remain compelling, did with dead cities. despite (because of, depending on your temperament) the ominous electrical fzzts and grinding tank treads in posthuman's speculative fictions, you'll find compelling reasons to stick around and explore a little. with a couple of notable exceptions, the "skam sound" seems to have evolved from recessive traits in recent years; perhaps posthuman will be the agent that steers the label toward viability again.

for more information, please visit seed records.

music

film

text

playlists