Mats Gustafsson & Joachim Nordwall - A Map of Guilt (2017)

Scandinavian noise mavericks Mats Gustafson & Joachim Nordwall plot a strange cartography of pseudo ethnic gestures and torrential rhythmic noise in A Map Of Guilt for Poland’s Bocian Records.

The original recordings were made at Garnison7, Vienna in 2013, mixed by Nordwall in 2015, and mastered in 2016, meaning they’ve been curing, so to speak, for nearly a year by now.

The results tap into a latent, ancient but timeless energy that lies at the core of the two collaborator’s best work, modulating the transfer of current and psychic energies between what sounds like pygmy jazz played on drainpipes in the likes of The Smell On Her Arms and Already Cold. Unprepared, to the more expansive tract of pulsating bass and howling chant in the title track, and a series of more condensed, surreal arabesques recalling Rashad Becker’s hypothetical creatures in Approaching and She Denied The Grass Getting Heavier, saving their crankiest jaunt for last with the feral swamp throng of Marks Covered By Wet Cloth.