Originally published on Inverted Audio

“A densely emotive album featuring epiphanic narratives in spoken word style, a passionate emphasis on greying grief clothed gently with the underscores of UK Rave, making it a delectable work of art” 

Critically devised, oddball satisfier ‘Suitcase In The Water‘ tickles a strange sense of comfort. Plunge head-first with headphones, and the brain stirs with great detail, a Hitchcock-like murder/ mystery grotesque, core melancholia, terrifying as it goes, a delirious calm waiting at the end like an unexpected aftertaste on the tongue, and rotting, ribbon-tied at the bottom, fragile human fate. 

For the peculiarly attractive London-based record label Blank Mind, Jacob Dwyer and Sam Purcell join forces to weave together on a long-haul Covid hangover, a densely emotive album featuring epiphanic narratives in spoken word style, a passionate emphasis on greying grief clothed gently with the underscores of UK Rave, making it a delectable work of art. 

Pick up the record and a plain white sleeve greets you with stickers placed on it as if without serious intent, one of a murky motorway (The Gravelly Hill Interchange), a Samsonite logo in blue, a human head in orange, and two more. Its rather bleak appearance, the purposeful lack of a dramatic cover, holds intriguing titles ‘Helmet In The Water‘, ‘Stick On Ice‘, ‘Old Guitarist‘, ‘6 AM Sunday 24th January‘, like loose timestamps recorded on a whim. The simplistic detail adds sincere allure to the descriptive text in an ambiguous fashion, suggesting imaginative possibilities. 

Unwinding onto its sinister territories, there you have a black-dyed lagoon holding dearly, a helmet with cartoon flames, and an expensive suitcase with puncture holes floating to the surface, a low whimpering of a wounded dog over bird songs at dawn and a mother brings calm to a brain lest-forgotten. 

With terror-tinged words that flip the skin, ‘Suitcase In The Water‘ flaunts unusually fragmented anecdotes painted with sensitive synths, dark ambient field recordings, and large rolls of rave-focused drums layered atop provocatively soothing basslines; not one track is a miss. A parting disclaimer for your pleasure: soak it as a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any reality, living or dead, is purely coincidental.