UKAEA - Birds Catching Fire in The Sky - 1LP

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"Energy Is Forever is a whirlwind affair – veering from the dystopian hard techno of ‘Vampire Moth’ to the distorted bagpipes of ‘RDX’ and the wall of white noise that is ‘Radio Zero’." – NME

"As much in common with the experimental music scenes of North Africa, the Levant, and the broader Middle East – artists like MSYLMA and ZULI and Praed Orchestra!, for instance – as it does with anything one might stereotypically think is going on in the UK or Western Europe.” – The Quietus

“The beats and the bass stop and a huge reverberant drone throbs in the barn before everything kicks in again with the speed and intensity of jungle, eventually moving up through hardcore bpms into pure gabba as more and

more clay-faced ravers start losing their s**t. I’m leaping up and down now. People all around me are screaming and punching the air furiously, heads evaporating in explosions of threshed hair.” – Vice

Birds Catching Fire In The Sky features genre-defying experimental electronic music by the celebrated, London-based collective, UKAEA.

Led by producer-musician Dan Jones, Birds Catching Fire In The Sky is UKAEA’s innovative and bold second album, due for release on revered experimental music label, The state51 Conspiracy.

An adventurous response to the imagined, post-capitalist futures of accelerationist electronica, a buzzing, radioactive, charred monument from a notional, hopefully avoidable dystopia to come – Birds Catching Fire In The Sky, the latest album by the Dan Jones-led collective, UKAEA is a lamentation in an age of mechanical violence but also a celebration of human defiance and endurance.

The properties that combine to make up this stormer of an album are evident from the outset – each of the album’s six tracks showcases a unique vocalist, irreplicable in approach and performance, amidst concussive rhythms that rain down from all sides, all angles, as if unleashed by extra terrestrial automatons raining down vicious beams, bass broadsides, metallic limbs stalking across a detritus filled, scorched landscape. The sense of caustic synth abrasion fleetingly recalls the visceral, deconstructed avant-club of Slikback or the electro-industrial music of Skinny Puppy. Elsewhere, there are reminders of the expansionist, psychedelic gabber of Gabber Modus Operandi, the transformative avant-pop of Arca and on “Habibi”, Dali de St Paul’s declamatory vocals, faintly reminds of Diamanda Galas, whilst Agatha Max’s violins resound unbowed even as the skies turn phosphorescent.

Jones’ ethnomusicological sense informs the album – waves of muezzin melancholia sweep across these heavily percussive pieces, often conveyed in the ionised arcing synths, the strings or the “ceramic sound sculptures” of Charly Blackburn, lending Birds Catching Fire In The Sky a pertinence in late 2023. There are, however, passages of pensive respite amid the rotorblade assaults, in which the skies clear, the bells toll and

human vulnerability shimmers melodiously and devastatingly as on “Dar El Fouad”, or “Rabbia” on which the moon continues to shine amid the madness, passages of strange and profound beauty.

The material for the album was created in close collaboration between producer-musician Dan Jones and eleven guest musicians who are from a diverse range of artistic backgrounds and are celebrated in their own right. The tracks were laboriously programmed and processed, subject to intensive treatments - reshapen, stressed, nuanced, but all so that they can become their true selves. For all of its ferocity, Birds Catching Fire In The Sky is an alluring, highly aesthetically pleasing experience, borne in part out of the pleasurable intensity of avant-club culture and packed dancefloors with its timbral and rhythmic invention,

unpredictability, sonic bombardment, bursts of colour – here is UKAEA’s ritualistic calling for a collective renewal. Birds Catching Fire In The Sky marks a significant milestone in the development of UKAEA, as Dan Jones explains:

“Coming from the last UKAEA album (Energy Is Forever, 2020), I knew we were capable of galvanising the narratives and sonic signatures into something at once more violent and more beautiful. I knew that the collaborators I had in mind would be able to offer incisive perspectives on the modern world, and intertwine their musical backgrounds with mine to hint at new idioms.

The pieces all started off as some kind of attempt to depict a shape in pure electricity using the modular synth, upon which I’d gradually pin sounds. Usually several of these nascent structures would be stitched together to make a musical form, which was then presented to the collaborators. These peoples’ musical

input and suggestions would almost always then make me want to deconstruct the piece and reconstruct it in a way that was more sympathetic. This process would sometimes happen several times over, leaving only the ghosts of the original voltage curves and trajectories, but in the end hopefully making more sense to us as music.

This album is a massive leap forward in terms of exploring new idioms, sounds and structures, whilst keeping the tracks accessible to at least the more adventurous DJs and dancefloors. Obviously there’s no bumping tech-house banger on there, but many of these tracks will definitely tear apart a soundsystem and leave the rave reeling. I know... I’ve already tested them.”

Matters come to a head on the concluding track, featuring Kaya Moore, one of a series of vocalists

performing on the album, including Deyar Yasin, Silvia Konstance, Marion Andrau and Conny Prantera, their voices floating eerily, almost holographically in the mix. "It began from darkness,” intones Moore with ominous, deadpan lucidity. “It has been allowed to take over... it must be cut out.” Is this surgery or annihilation? Following the preceding climactic strafe, Henry Dean’s improvised, modernist rubato piano

sequences then flourish, closing Birds Catching Fire In The Sky, sounding an abiding humanity atop the rubble.

1. Habibi feat. Dali de Saint Paul

2. La Stessa Croce feat. Silvia Konstance

3. Dar El Fouad feat. Deyar Yasin

4. Nocturne Vulgaire feat. Marion Andrau

5. Rabbia feat. Conny Prantera

6. Vulnera feat. Kaya Moore