Scissorgun
by Mat Smith
Manchester-based Scissorgun is a duo of multi-disciplinary electronic artist Dave Clarkson and guitarist / vocalist Alan Hempsall, both stalwarts of the Manchester music scene. Clarkson has divided his recent time between projects like Spectral Bazaar, whose electronic re-imagining of Holst’s Planet Suite produced one of last year’s finest records, and his ongoing processed field recording projects for the Linear Obsessional label. Hempsall was one of the founding members of the legendary post-punk group Crispy Ambulance, part of the early Factory Records roster and a band that were the first local group to own a drum machine.
The pair met in the early 2000s at a gig by Triclops, a trio that Clarkson was then a member of, and promptly hit it off. Their Scissorgun project was named after a 2002 Crispy Ambulance album, released some twenty years after the band originally split up and following their tentative reforming in the late 1990s. Hempsall and Clarkson’s first release was Assault Two, released in 2016, its name again referencing an earlier Crispy Ambulance release (their debut single, 1980’s ‘From The Cradle To The Grave’, had the catalogue reference Assault One). The coded references suggested this was, if not an extension of Hempsall’s band, then certainly inextricably linked.
And so we arrive at this year’s follow-up, the wryly-titled All You Love Is Need. Recorded following a period in which the band toured with Wrangler, you can hear some of that group’s rough electronic edges rubbing off on the eleven songs presented here. ‘Forensic Dub’ and ‘Hybrid Threat’ echo Wrangler’s focus on punishing electronic rhythms fused with a lysergic, mantra-like vocal style, but the Scissorgun sound is arguably more robust, more rocky, less overtly beholden to alien electronics: ‘Hybrid Threat’ features brilliant guitar work from Hempsall, running from a sort of evocative, emotive blues to an angry, distorted nod in the direction of punk, while ‘Forensic Dub’ takes a provocative dubstep bassline and hitches it to textural guitar shapes, an insistent industrial beat and acidic gurgling. “You can hear both of our influences coming through on Scissorgun,” Clarkson explained to me last year. “Alan was a big Throbbing Gristle fan, and I was as well. We bring those influences out on the Scissorgun recordings. It’s a kind of melting pot of all kinds of things.”
Opening track ‘Terminal Velocity (Syncing)’ sets the uncompromising scene for the record, Hempsall delivering the vocal as a hypnotic, cautionary chant over a machine-like groove of heavy bass, fractured synths and howling guitars. The rhythm is key here, sounding like a throwback to the post-punk jazz-funk swing of a group like A Certain Ratio yet carrying a sort of ritualistic, tribal energy. From there we move through tracks like ‘Salvia’, full of dreamy guitar, space-era launchpad samples and a general sense of fragile serenity, like looking upward at an untroubled sky from a terminal beach.
‘Bruise’ is one of the album’s many highlights, wherein the duo throw themselves into a sort of hypnotic, techno-inflected pop, all nagging synths and an unswerving grid of 4/4 beats. Here you find Hempsall delivering a wordless stream of vocal utterances, almost like he’s reading a Hugo Ball sound poem. ‘Dark Routines’ is another standout moment, being a beatific sequence of delicate, semi-ambient electronic passages, while the frantic ‘Pumpkin Face’ has all the force and thrust of an Empirion live industrial techno set from the mid-1990s, its relentless focus on a rolling, urgent bassline acting as the perfect foil for Hempsall’s feisty guitar work.
The long-form closing track ‘Double Agent’ begins with the sound of rushing water, familiar to followers of Clarkson’s work recording in Cornish caves and on the Wirral coast near where he grew up. From there we hear snatches of sinister radio transmissions, an unfolding suite of bass sounds that sound like they belong in an especially tense scene in Stranger Things, a fluttering Morse-code pattern and ominous guitars that sound like Hempsall is playing determinedly at the centre of a pentagram. That the piece eventually coalesces into a sort of ethereal beauty highlights what this duo do best: subverting expectations.