Staff Reviews

Gazelle Twin - Unflesh

Review by Tristan Bath

Unflesh is a truly brilliant piece of work, and the sound of an artist trailblazing through as of yet uninhabited territory.»

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In 2014, nearly three years after her acclaimed debut 'The Entire City' (July 2011, Anti-Ghost Moon Ray), Gazelle Twin re-emerged in full force to stage and screen, gnashing her teeth and armed with pickings from her sophomore full length - 'Unflesh' - , followed by the artist's first ever Tour in October. In 'Unflesh' the British artist/composer/producer - known on her ID cards as 'Elizabeth Bernholz' - explores a newfound, adrenalised-Pop style in greater depth - from the bone-chilling, Iggy Pop-inspired 'I Feel Blood', the stark choral lullaby of 'Premonition', to the Prince-meets-Sonic Youth influenced 'GUTS' and 'Still Life'. Far removed from the artist's former dreamscapes, 'Unflesh' presents a stripped down hyper-colour, hyperreality. Conceived in part, as a means of acting out vengeance on her antagonists (the list of which includes teenhood, recurring dreams, and her own body), Gazelle Twin's startling, electric-blue guise at once embodies the strife of her blighted younger self, and a kind of post-Pagan manifestation with superhuman potential - a concept that bears all the markings of an unwritten, cult Graphic Novel.But 'Unflesh' is not just an auto-biographical purging. Songs delve as candidly into themes as diverse as the history of European colonisation (I Feel Blood), Euthanasia (Good Death), children raised by animals (Human Touch), to gentle musings on miscarriage (Premonition). Despite this odd crop of topics, a 2 year exploration into science and medicine - the mutations, mysteries and liberations of the human mind and body - forms the spine of a courageous concept LP. A solo artist through and through, Bernholz rarely works out of her cloistered, digital home studio, but with the additional production and mixing artistry of Benge (one third of Wrangler, one half of John Foxx and The Maths, and internationally renowned analogue synthesiser hero), her new sound - crafted consciously from the analogue sounds of John Carpenter and Prince - is notably strengthened by the addition of museum-piece synthesisers such as the Moog Modular, the Linn-1, Formant Synth and the legendary CS80 - used by Vangelis' to create the soundtrack for Blade Runner. The LP's artwork (by the artist herself) features a Francis Bacon-inspired digital collage of the grimacing girl in blue, highlighting a clear obsession with the surreal and the visceral and confirming that Bernholz's all-encompassing creative output is every bit as startling as her recent critical acclaim suggests. Those who acquire the 12" LP or Digipak CD version of the UNFLESH album will encounter typography by Grammy award-winning British design agency, Barnbrook
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