Subterminal

Description

Cinder has been Cindytalk's sole constant member since they started in the early 1980s. A series of band albums from Camouflage Heart (1984) to Wappinschaw (1995) saw the group develop an often uncompromisingly dark, intense and poetic body of work, with Cinder's vocals complemented by music which moved between industrial, post-punk, ambient and fully improvised, while directly connecting across disciplines to performance, film and other media. Since 1995, Cindytalk has continued in both group and solo form, across live performance and recordings. During this period, Cindytalk increasingly embraced improvisation in live settings and electronic work through recordings. A series of solo and predominantly electronic albums followed, then Of Ghosts and Buildings was released on the Japanese label Remodel in 2021, continuing Cinder's integration of electronics with field recordings. After periods in the USA and Japan, Cinder returned to Scotland, from where Cindytalk's Subterminal was developed across 2020-21, and the album continues and extends Cinder's interest in longer-form compositions. The album is organised across four parts, charting a progression or suggesting a poetic narrative development across its 48 minutes - moving from hope to collective delusion, then to hallucination, and finally to escape. A collaboration was struck between Cinder and visual artist Paul Tone on the selection and arrangement of images for the album packaging. "Cindytalk is a beautifully dark enigma. Having started life as a full band in the goth heyday of the 1980s, they now centre on the figure of Gordon Sharp/Cinder, who use the name to explore deep and mysterious electronic psycho-geography. On the surface, the music of Cindytalk could be described as "industrial" but scratch deeper and the breadth of their humanity becomes starkly real and inescapable." - Dusted Magazine "Cindytalk are pushing the boundaries of what music can be, reinventing and pursuing sonic possibilities, combining the actuality of the world with the imaginary and hallucinatory to create a magical, intriguing four-part work." - International Times, review of Subterminal. "Intelligently and intricately constructed..creating something magical, otherworldly and sometimes alien" - Compulsion Online, review of Subterminal