Helm – Olympic Mess

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*Mastered by Rashad Becker, features photography by Kim Thue and artwork by Bill Kouligas* Luke Younger’s Helm undergoes a captivating metamorphosis from noise agitator to industrial ambient alchemist with ‘Olympic Mess’, his new album for PAN. Prompted by a period of personal turmoil and a chaotic lifestyle on the road playing support for Danish punks, Ice Age; Younger expands his sonic palette here with nods to the loop-based structures and textural sensuality of balearic disco, dub techno and industrial music. When filtered into his patented mix of hi-fidelity electro-acoustic process, field recordings and intricate noise, the juxtapositions seemingly consolidate the exhausting, narcotic highs of playing live night-after-night with the serenity of ambient come-down tones and suspended states of dance/noise music delirium. Likewise, this aesthetic could be read to reflect his recording environments, folding in the flux of people, concrete, steel and electricity between New York, Berlin and London across its ten tracks, manifest from the schizoid warp of ‘Don’t Lick The Jacket’ to the dense grind and explosive euphoria of ‘Outerzone 2015’, or the unsettling intimacy of found sound in the monologue of ‘Strawberry Chapstick’. We’d also read a certain Ballardian element to the whole album, from the kinaesthetic crush of the record cover’s car wreck detail, to the album’s titular reference to London’s layered, evolving skyline, and the visceral tang and vibration of blood, emotions and momentum inherent to transient life on the road and in the city. RIYL Tim Hecker, Deepchord, Posh Isolation.