Described as “A noir-electronic meditation on isolation and resonance,” “It Is Howling Here,” a collaboration between Ryan Kent’s Poems For Dead People and electronic dream weavers, Intertitle, is a wonderful blend of spoken word and bleak yet beguiling post-punk electronica. Even as I read back what I have put into words, I realize that such a description still doesn’t really capture what is going on here.
Because, it is not just what is going on, but the way it is going on —not just the combination of sounds, but the attention to detail within those sounds—that creates such a dark and delicious effect. It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it, indeed.
The spoken component is world-weary and confessional, the beats cold and clinical, their skittering nature pushed back into the middle distance rather than being allowed to dominate, and between those two sonic markers, blends of skuzzed-up guitars and liquid sonics, space and atmosphere all coil and collide and construct in varying amounts to create the body of the song.
The intent was, apparently, to create a piece of music that sounded like a broadcast received on a long-forgotten frequency, something that felt like it fell between poetry and pulse, memory and machinery, but something other, something from beyond. It is fair to say that this is mission accomplished.
This is music of the liminal spaces, music that borders other, non-musical creative spaces, music that walks fine lines between genres and artforms, music that sits at a point where all manner of disciplines wash up against each other. Music that sounds like the soundtrack to the hottest and most underground, urban dystopia film of the moment, unnerving yet totally reflective, relateable and resonant of the mindset of our times.
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