Richie Culver - I Trust Pain (2025)

Rainy Miller’s Fixed Abode label hosts Richie Culver on his sick debut drill x ambient noise album ‘I Trust Pain’, an 11-track exemplar of neo northern gothic, and prob the only UK drill album in existence to sample Dominique Lawalrée...

'I TRUST PAIN' is Culver's most surprising album yet, 11 tracks of downcast UK drill that sharpens and refines his uniquely northern artistic outlook. Named after a painting and soundwork Culver created last year for Berlin's notorious Hermannplatz U-bahn station, it's a reminder of a darker, addiction-blighted period in his life when he lived in Berlin over a decade ago. Each track takes its title from a different artistic milestone, piecing together a chilling, bile-fueled autobiography that's narrated coolly over trilling 808 hats and heaving subs. "Woke up in your city, now all that remains is my accent," he quips on lead single 'Chase Money' across Rainy Miller and Bitter Gold's foggy backdrop. Orchestral swells moan in the distance, as Culver transforms his voice from a ruff growl to a nonchalant gesticulation, quickly shrugging off the weight of each resonant word as he vomits out a lifetime of misunderstanding from prejudiced art world elites.

"Pain, I trust pain," he repeats until it hurts on the title track, slurring his pitched-up words into eerie waves of guitar feedback and dungeon synths. And on 'I Loved You', he snaps into the other direction, decelerating his mouthed memorials as acid-washed pads and gnarled scrapes dissolve into brittle, skeletal drum patterns. The alienated doom poetry of Culver's vital early albums hasn't disappeared completely, either. Those tracks, like 'Sarah' and 'Puncture You', provide aesthetic adhesive for his more upfront numbers, giving room for us to chew over his inky themes. On the former, Culver's desperate pleas are set against sad, euphoric soundscapes, and on the latter, his voice guides thru a tragic meditation, curling around each syllable with razor claws.

Everything builds up to the album's satisfying two-headed finale, with nihilist anthem 'Nothing' (sample lyric: "I wanna live my life about nothing, I wanna write songs about nothing") followed by the cacophonous 'Curse', a minute of ear-bleed factory noise that introduces Culver's most vinegary words. "As a child I would kneel, hands clasped, pleading for mercy, mercy you will never give," he spits. "I no longer kneel, I no longer beg, I am now the curse."