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tick tick tick

by Stephen Mallinder

supported by
Fin Squandrago
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Fin Squandrago All the pinging, tapping, throbbing sounds that made '80s Cabs records fantastic, and a voice that I'll never get tired of. Favorite track: Shock to the Body.
muhamorik
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muhamorik Thank You- The whole album makes me feel orgastic! Shock to The body...
Allan Tanner
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Allan Tanner This album has completely got under my skin. Stripped back electronica with a dark undercurrent, there's lots going on - little inserts here and there you only notice after repeat listening. The sequencing on this is really good, takes you into the heart of the album really well. Wasteland is brilliant - clicks, obscured vocals, simple bass blips - so good. Finishing off with the eponymous Tick Tick Tick, an infectious, nod-inducing beat. Less is definitely more. Can't recommend enough. Favorite track: Wasteland.
Jason Bagley
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Jason Bagley All the sounds and feels you'd want if you love Stephen's previous bands, but with some new twists and ideas keeping it fresh. Favorite track: Shock to the Body.
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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of tick tick tick via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    edition of 600 
    Purchasable with gift card

      $24.99 USD or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of tick tick tick via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    edition of 700 
    Purchasable with gift card

      $24.99 USD or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of tick tick tick via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $22.99 USD or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of tick tick tick via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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1.
Contact 04:57
2.
ringdropp 04:49
3.
Galaxy 06:44
4.
Wasteland 05:16
5.
Hush 06:00
6.
7.
8.
The Trial 05:22
9.

about

Cabaret Voltaire co-founder Stephen Mallinder’s second solo outing for Dais further distills his signature fusion of minimal synth, oblique wordplay, and “wonky disco” into a riveting rhythm suite ripe for our age of escalation: tick tick tick. Channeling the temporal malaise of lockdown through a lusher palette of modular electronics and stereo strings, the songs embrace ambiguity and plasticity, loose systems of percolating circuitry and airless funk. Recorded across a handful of sessions at MemeTune Studios in Cornwall with frequent collaborator Benge (aka Ben Edwards), Mallinder cites no guiding aesthetic premise for the collection beyond “cowbell on every track, and entirely no reverb.”

From the first coiled cybernetic groove of opener “Contact,” the album’s spatial dynamics are disorienting and asymmetrical, alternately cold and sensual, opiated and claustrophobic. But, throughout, “rhythm is the default, the bedrock, the building block – even the melodies are rhythmic.” Across 40-plus years of electronic musicianship, Mallinder’s sense of timing and tempo has honed into a rare tier of mastery, limber and fluid but knotted with strange frictions. Shades of Detroit technoid industrial (“ringdropp,” “Shock to the Body”) crossfade into no wavy punk-funk (“Guernica Gallery,” “Galaxy,” “The Trial”), bad trip IDM (“Wasteland”), and jittery vapor house (“Hush”), at the threshold of modes both familiar and foreign.

Lyrically the record is equally evasive, rich with allusions and associative linguistics, surveying liquid notions of societal noise, ecological ruin, art world pretension, and the trials of daily life. But the lack of fixed meaning remains Mallinder’s main muse: “Music should draw you in; lyrics should make you think. Most interpretation is misinterpretation.” This is music of countdowns and comedowns, fleeting pleasures and opaque futures, observing the great decline while dancing on its ashes. Flux is deathless and forever; the rest, illusion: “I will be a constant figure / Flickering a moving picture / Turning in your head forever / Split apart but held together.”

credits

released July 15, 2022

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about

Stephen Mallinder Brighton, UK

Musician, artist, academic, speaker. Founding member and frontman of Cabaret Voltaire. Member of Wrangler, Creep Show, Hey Rube, Kula, Cobby & Mallinder.

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