Kevin Tomkins — Music For A Unprepared Autoharp

Here’s an eighteen-track CD that collections together all of the tracks Kevin Tomkins( Sutcliffe Jugend, Sutcliffe No More, ex-Whitehouse) recorded utilizing autoharp in the early 2000’s. It’s a nicely varied, and creative collection which moves between the busy & off-kilter, to the layered & twitching, onto the pick ‘n’ grate psycho ambient bound, and beyond

The release appears in a four-panel glossy digipak- which features close-up pictures of the autoharp, and light textured brown with minimal white texts- detailing what elements Kevin used with the autoharp, and recording dates.

We open with the track “Isolation” here we find slicing, glitching, suddenly spinning metallic tones topped with a single female moan loop. Making for a track that’s both dizzying & uneasy. Moving on we have the waving/ blending & blurring stuck string swoon ‘n’ buzz of “Trail”. We have the eerier tonal swoop, creak, and melancholic almost harmonic sweep of “Quite”.

Moving on to the second half of the disc we have locked trailing rush, meets locked micro-tonal knock, and subtle ambient underflow of “Flat Coping”.  We have the circling swirling sourness, slow-mo eerier drag ‘n’ sweep, and locked hiccuping of “Dark Star Rising”.  There’s tick twang, meets saw, fiddle, and tightly together knockings of “Only Birds”. With the album playing out with the warped fairground harmonics, basic stumbling percussion, and growing fly buzz-like feast of “When The Carnival Is Over”

 All in all, Music For A Unprepared Autoharp is a collection which sits somewhere between taut & uneasy modern compositions, ambience, soundtracking, and general creative-if-often highly disquieting sonics,