GH: "Earth"

Modern Love’s parting shot for 2011 is a brutal little EP from Pendle Coven’s Gaz Powell. With this latest alias, every feasible arrangement of artists on the label has now been attempted—head honcho Shlom will have to resort to kidnapping if he wants to make his gene pool any wider. Or maybe not, as his signings are an inspired bunch, capable of taking the techno rule book and adding new terms to the end of it. GH’s contribution is “junglist hardcore stripped of its percussion,” and these three tracks seem to have found their author with his head shaved and shoved in a dungeon. He’s only got rats and recording hardware for company, and some dark shit’s about to go down. If Howell’s parent genre is witch house then this EP is its blackest possible cauldron.

Having made it through the two crackly cuts on side A, “Earth”‘s dubstep sludge and apocalyptic growl should finally convince you to chain your door shut, and to switch genres and appreciate twee. Peppered with R&B samples too shredded to make out (but too exquisite to run away from), the track hulks and heaves like a bear in a man-trap, threatening to go postal any second. This half happens at 1:50, when Howell inserts a rhythm and his foggy pads come to life, the thudding beats oozing video game bass as Rick Astley is sucked out of a stealth fighter. If you’ve got an imagination to entertain that kind of thing or just want to hear a soul 12” played backwards, tiptoe cautiously into the world of GH Howell’s cooked up an excellent bastardization of styles, and the deep house equivalent of The Human Centipede 2.