High-concept electronics innovator
Who They?
A new project from London-based multi-instrumental avant-gardist Alex Tucker, who you may know as half of Grumbling Fur alongside Daniel O’Sullivan. Tucker has form at the cutting edge of the UK electronic underground, but Microcorps is all about his collaborative nature, which here sees him explore the interface between electronics, cello and voice together with electro-provocateurs Elizabeth Bernholz of Gazelle Twin, Factory Floor’s Nik Void, the multi-talented Simon Fisher Turner and experimental folk singer Astrud Steehouder.
Why Microcorps?
If you’ve a thing for hard, unapologetically synthetic machine music, then debut long-player ‘XMIT’ is for you. With his focus on the humanoid rather than the human, Tucker has conjured up something compellingly dark and original here. But don’t worry if you think it all sounds a little too concept-driven, because the end results are anything but. The icy, strobe-lit acid-fried techno of ‘Uvu’ is an absolute banger, and could comfortably soundtrack any rebel android super-rave that awaits a thousand centuries hence.
Tell us more…
Whether Tucker is working on his own pushing acid folk to its logical extreme with his 2012 album ‘Third Mouth’, or in the thick of it making the dazzling lysergic art pop of Grumbling Fur, he is precisely the right man to lead this oblique examination of dancefloor aesthetics. “I was investigating how language brings our world into being and how manipulating the actual grain of the voice could open up momentary shifts in perception”, says Tucker of ‘XMIT’. And on ‘XEM’, the electrifying track he made with Elizabeth Bernholz, he proves his point. His heavily processed vocals duet with what Tucker describes as “this claustrophobic monologue and coiling wordless vocal drones” in what is probably the defining track of this extraordinarily alien, genuinely unmissable project.
‘XMIT’ is out on Alter
