clang records – clang015 – 4th December 2015
James Wells
Having received a Danish release in the summer of 2014, Frank Benkho’s exploratory electronic EP, ‘The Revelation According to…’ gets a full global release via Denmark’s clang records. Which is cool – unlike the cover art. It’s just not… representative. Or very good. And while nothing suggests ego like the artist including their name in an album’s title (take Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby, for example), Frank Benkho ostensibly offers little of himself or his ego on this four-track EP, instead concentrating his energies on the creation of textured atmospherics.
The EP is laid out in four chapters, although stringing any kind of narrative from the tracks in – or out of – sequence isn’t something that seems like much of an option.
Low, hypnotic pulsing synths undulate beneath spaced-out howls and solar winds on ‘The Trumpets of the Puma’. ‘Under the sands of Pisagua’ is darkly sonorous, building to a shimmering psychedelic drone and culminating in as shredding crescendo of noise. The final chapter, ‘Removing Televisions’ transitions through a succession of movements, undulating analogue eddies and multiple sonic threads intertwine, their different time signatures running against one another disorientating.
Think Throbbing Gristle in collaboration with Suicide, and you’ve got some sense of what The Revelation According to Frank Benkho sounds like. It’s a revelation, alright.
https://clanglabel.bandcamp.com/album/the-revelation-according-to-frank-benkho
