★★★☆☆
The society pages should take note of a techno collection that sported a New Hat last year, leans to the left, and becomes more and more off the wall until there’s a free-for-all to pap down the runway. Striking posers throughout, you won’t be able to take eyes and ears off Gobby’s lights-camera-action that the dastardly Harlem designer is only too pleased to project through a mass of wires and plug-ins.
Brash curtain raiser “Krylon Surf Magix” amps the analog and gives instant lift-off; a little scattershot, but with Gobby letting you know he’s got this. His loop philosophy is to clamp down and see if the screws come loose, disorientation courtesy of any effects caught in its orbit and tailoring a burgeoning metallic bump. The peak is the acid-drugged “Rashe”, having you doing hyper bunny hops to warehouse techno madness. “Slick Boi Gel” is a cacophony of laser synths twisting the catwalk into a stinging uprising of dry ice, before “Healing Factor” kills the lights with a trundling plus-sized model of ungainly, crunchy minimalism, like tribalism re-translated by an alien race.
Gobby continues the chaotic crowding of the soundbed with the industrial footwork breakout “Lect Hom.” Closing two tracks “Faculty” and “Spilla Drink” loop long, harshly and high, the glamour and glitz suffocated by the blitzing style icon. Beyond a diva, Gobby’s muse is a bruising ball-buster, tight-roping the divide between whatever feels right and dressing in the dark.
File under: Actress, Techno Animal, The Squire of Gothos