Cyclist, The

Cyclist, The

Weather Underground

100% Silk

2020's tense, tectonic unrest is a fitting foreground for Andrew Morrison's freshest slab of bruised and blasted Cyclist productions, Weather Underground. Like their ravaged revolutionary group namesake, these tracks exude a mood of strife, shadows, and smoke, simmering protest transmissions from the grim north. The songs smear shades of industrial hypnosis, basement dub, and soul lament within his signature saturated “tape throb” palette like tagged concrete stained by tear gas. Rhythms of release and resistance, bodies in motion on the edge of the storm, coiled to strike for futures too unthinkable to lose.

Cyclist, The

Alabaster Thrones

100% Silk

Last year’s altered mind opus, Sapa Inca Delirium, showcased The Cyclist at his most eclectic, spanning ayahuasca break-beat and rave jungle pop, but his latest EP returns to the uniquely kinetic and shredded mode of churning electronic rhythm he both named and perfected: “tape throb.” Alabaster Thrones collects four of Andrew Morrison’s recent and most vibrantly blasted house constructs, tracked at his home studio in Birmingham, UK during “the height of mania – a time when I had no time.” The context translates: this is urgent, accelerating music, shifting gears at high speed in dim twisting tunnels. The title is “a deflation of grandiosity” cribbed from Ulysses (“…a noble race, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster, silent as the deathless gods”), though Morrison’s meaning is more personal: “It’s a reminder to level yourself and think of all those around you.” A captivating capsule of ravaged forward motion for a ravaged forward-moving age. Mastered by Eric Hanson. Design by Britt Brown.

Cyclist, The

Beat At The Heart Of The City

100% Silk

A six song sidekick to The Cyclist’s latest extended play offering, Alabaster Thrones, these two magnetized sides span nine years of hermetic hardware experiments conducted in itinerant living arrangements across Derry, Liverpool, and Birmingham. From toy tape loops and echobox gauze (“Diorge Grian” – Irish for “Derry sun”) to shredded soul (“Lucille”) and tightly coiled dub noir (“Cologne Halls”), Beat At The Heart Of The City showcases Andrew Morrison’s singular ear for vibrantly damaged dancefloor energies. Tensions and raptures rev and unravel in intuitive asymmetries, evoking cold clubs, deserted streets, dazed gardens – bleary beauty for crumbling kingdoms. Of the feverish rhythm delirium “One Day In The Life Of Ivana” Morrison even credits illness as muse: “I deeply remember being extremely sick at the time.” It’s grim up north. Mastered by Eric Hanson.