Good morning, friends, and happy Friday! For the month of February, I’ve been featuring Richard Skelton on Headphone Community. We are wrapping up his residency tomorrow, but not before we share one last treat. Shadow Reflex is Richard’s 9th album as The Inward Circles, and this one is so deliciously dark, especially with the rhythm, where Richard “pushes his acoustic-transformation ethos into its most hostile, percussive shape yet.” This is an unforeseen and very welcome change in direction, in which his signature sound of amorphous, smeared, and scratched organic instruments is now shaped, restrained, and carried by an ominous, punishing beat. It is approaching the territory of Belief Defect, Raime, and Lakker, which, at least for me, are all standout acts!
[Shadow Reflex is Richard’s] most alien and forbidding work since 2015’s “I have heard a music and it is delirious”, but the mood here is less atmospheric and more blunt-force. Acoustic sources are still present — scraped, struck, bowed — yet they’re subjected to processes that shear away any sense of origin, leaving only convulsive rhythm and scorched resonance. After the fragile, aetheric beauty of 2023’s “Before We Lie Down In Darknesse”, “Shadow Reflex” feels like a violent course correction — a work of bruising corporeality, where sound is no longer something to drift within, but something that holds the listener under.
I won’t spoil the experience with my words alone and will point you directly to his Bandcamp, where you can preview (and hopefully purchase) this album. The limited-edition CD appears to be sold out, but you can still enjoy the digital version of this album. While you’re there, you may want to consider grabbing the entire digital discography of nine releases from The Inward Cricles, currently on sale at 50% off. Highly recommended.
