Wormhole World – 20th March 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
Given the diminishing number of grassroots venue and the changing nature of live music consumption – whereby the masses flock to £60+ arena shows, and are happy to pay £20 or more to see a third-rate tribute act while swilling £8 pints and yammering away loudly to their mates for the entire evening, with barely one ear on the music, it’s small wonder acts who are new and / or more niche struggle to get bookings. And without taking your music to a new audience through live shows, if you can’t afford PR to plug your music to radio stations and the like, how are artists ever to break through the algorithmic recommendations and reach people? This is even more of a challenge for experimental electronic acts, as most small venues are more likely to showcase ‘bands’ or guitar-based music in the main, unless they’re doing something that’s promotable as ‘electropop’ or similar.
It’s thanks to the EMOM (Electronic Music Open Mic) network, and, in particular, the EMOM nights in York, hosted by North Facing Garden at The Fulford Arms – one if the most accommodating venues there is, who don’t only welcome weird and experimental shit, but have sound engineers who are up to the job of facilitating the kind of noise the acts who play such events are striving for, that I’ve caught TSR2 live on numerous occasions. These nights don’t only host bedroom explorers just starting out, but acts with respectable recording careers who simply can’t get a foothold on the regular gig circuit. And TSR2 certainly have quite a recording career already.
A yin / yang / pro / con of the EMOM format is that each performer gets just fifteen minutes, which is great by way of a showcase, a taster, and also great if you’re not digging it as no act is on long enough for it to get boring, but of you are digging it, or the music itself requires a more expansive set…
Transmission is TSR2 serving a more expansive set, with ten tracks and a running time in the region of an hour. It’s their second release on Lancashire label Wormhole World, following Birdstrike! in 2024, and it brings full-spectrum bleeps, churn, and imaginative abstraction, and the first composition – which is also the title track – brings all of this simultaneously, with space-age heavy drone given structure by some industrial strength beats which hit hard.
There’s ambient abstraction and swirling spaciness in abundance, all the oscillations and layers bouncing back and forth off one another, skittering and surging, with moments which elicit the essence of R2D2, others which are more like wading through long grass while struggling to find the path.
Muffled samples merge with the delirious digital meltdown that is ‘Modern Life’ and while it does have me briefly contemplating ‘Darker Avenues’, samples float and echo around the darker ambient spaces of ‘The Salt Marsh’. The ten-minute ‘Sewer Lawyer Logic’ is a dark, detailed exploration which ventures into dank sonic territories, and ‘Some Of You Had Better Go Home’ wanders between the terrains of Krautrock and Industrial – specifically at the point where Chris and Cosey make their departure to spawn techno.
Transmission evokes the atmosphere of space travel – but more in the sense we imagine than of the latest vanity loop around the moon – and laser-squirting sci-fi explorations. It’s a varied album, which presents shades of both light and darkness and ever-shifting moods.
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Aural Aggravation 