More than once, experimental musician Klein has joked with interviewers that her next move will be toward the mainstream—a hip-hop album, a workout album, signing to Roc Nation, moving to Los Angeles to become an Academy Award-winning actress. . And every time, he'll come back with a record that sounds like a church organ picking up steam in a Category 3 hurricane, or something equally questionably marketable. It's a revealing set-up, however, because the South London artist has firmly positioned herself as an outsider to the gated world of the avant-garde, more schooled in Hot 97 hits than the underground artists – Dean Blunt, Mica Levi – to whom she was initially compared.
Eight albums into Klein's discography, that claim is becoming harder to back up. She has performed at the Barbican and the ICA in London, adapted her own stage musical into a film and has Björk's number saved in her contacts. And yet, as her wildly odd live shows attest, Klein still defies categorization. On marked doubles down, confining herself almost entirely to a palette of blistering guitars you'd probably associate with the anti-rock extremism of Wolf Eyes and Aaron Dilloway. Technically, he has explored this sound before. “Top Degrees”, from 2022 Cave in the wind, could be a lost bootleg of an Einstürzende Neubauten soundcheck. “Grit”, from 2020 Frosted, sounds like a distant cement mixer chewing on a Telecaster. But up markedalmost every minute is claimed by Klein's guitar, distorted into oblivion and shuddering with feedback.
Overdriven riffs blow holes in the VU meter on “gully creepa”, opening a gateway to a nightmarish loop that's half dub soundsystem, half doom metal. Muddy drones are juxtaposed with treble scrapers and booming drum machines on “Blow the Whistle” – a leap into new heavy territory for Klein, but one that will feel familiar to fans of JK Flesh and Dreamcrusher. It is tempting to interpret the mood as an anguished introspection. On “more than like” she goes swimming in an inky piano pool, drowning in steady low notes, desperate. Next come the extended looping drones of “Enemy of the State”, where jagged chords slowly blend into a huge slug of noise, Glenn Branca's guitar orchestration.
Klein's signature flamboyant vocal runs are largely absent from the album. ditto the patched-up backing voices that often populate her dream narratives. The exceptions come to a close on three a cappella tracks: the vocal R&B of “frontin',” a mini-duet with La Timpa titled “neek,” and the closing “exclusive.” Flipping the entire album's script, “exclusive” is pure, unmistakable Klein—hyper-melissant vocals, a pitch-shifting loop over trap drums, a sleazy rap (reused from “black famous,” on last year's touched by an angel): “I just look around and what do I see/Another mini me,” he spits through the autotune, “Sweet girl big dreams/She's called purse.” The contrast to the previous 45 minutes is like pressing a bag of frozen peas against a bruise.
