So given that David is still warm, breathing and waxing apocalyptic pretty regularly, why bother with someone who’s—no other turn of phrase really fits here—got the words but not the music? That’s the problem I face with Valentine (Lost) Forever, the third album from Theme, which all sounds like stuff Tibet waxed back in the Nineties and then threw into the vault and did his best to forget about.

Each track has the same basic structure: some droning looped-sample underbed; the occasional bit of percussion or reverbed effects; and hissed/snarled/whispered vocals with a British Isles lisp that come off like someone giving an annoying street corner poetry reading.  Most of the lyrics are, I guess, meant to be scathing indictments of the soullessness and directionless of modern life or some such, but they just come off as vague and unfocused. “As ever, nothing holds the answer / It seems there’s less and less to believe / The further we reach out.”

Why does something like this not work when, say, Genesis P. Orridge and Merzbow teamed up for A Perfect Pain and blew the doors off not only with volume but emotional intensity? Probably ‘cause they were, you know, Genesis and Merzbow, and because they brought some creativity to the table above and beyond just what was in the sounds or the contents of the words. At one point on this record there’s the line “Have you studied yourself lately?”, and I wanted to snap back: Yeah, I have. And you?  Probably not the answer they were looking for.