Pitch Black – Rude Mechanicals

Pitch Black’s fourth album finally gets the vinyl pressing it so richly deserves.
Originally released in 2007, Rude Mechanicals found the duo firing on all cylinders.
The nine years since their debut had been spent touring their cutting-edge audio-
visual show round the world, playing everywhere from Tokyo to Tauranga, Portland
to Paris, Leeds to Las Vegas, finding fans and absorbing new sounds along the way.
They successfully combined and refined the stand-out elements of their previous
releases to create an album that is alternately danceable and meditative: a genre
busting excursion in sound, heaving with warm basslines and complex rhythms,
topped up by haunting melodies and immersive soundscapes.
From the evocative opening South of the Line to the stepping 1000 Mile Drift, the
dub is strong, as one would expect, and so is the influence of drum’n’bass on the
bottom-heavy Bird Soul and the atmospheric Please Leave Quietly; trance on the
pulsating Sonic Colonic (Live at Minikami) and slinky Transient Transmission (fig.2);
ambient on the burbling Harmonia and softly snarling Fragile Ladders. The title track,
meanwhile, finds them addressing climate change and greed, with lyrics by Auckland
MC KP.
To create the double-vinyl release, Angus McNaughton re-mastered the original
audio files, while Hamish Macaulay polished the source artwork by Tom Quarelle and
created a brand new collage for the centrefold using pictures taken at the time.