London-based musician Bobby Krlic, aka The Haxan Cloak, was one of our favourite discoveries of last year. His self-titled debut album, released through Aurora Borealis, was a quite remarkable thing, a suite of pitch-dark instrumentals that touched on the occult. The Haxan Cloak found Krlic playing a whole range of instruments, from cello to electronics, and layering them up into dense, repetitive landscapes, within which were scattered ghost choirs and the ominous creak of wood and machinery. We were so enamoured with it that it came fourth in our albums of 2011 – quite the achievement for a debut – and we chatted to him in depth about its inception, which you can read here.
Krlic has now signed to Tri Angle for his next album. But in the interim period, he headed into the Southern studios to record an instalment in their excellent Latitudes series. It captures a snapshot of his live show around the end of 2011, where skeletal beats begin to work their way in amongst the strains of the choir and the rumble of sub-bass. Quite different to his previous work but no less striking, this excerpt of ‘The Men Parted The Sea To Devour The Water’ bodes well for where he’s likely to head next. You can pre-order the record on LP/CD here.
"This recording is about trying to re-interpret my own work, I think," says Krlic of his Latitudes session. "I never want to give a straight recreation of any of my recorded material when I play live – one reason is because it is too logistically difficult, but the main reason is that I just don’t think it suits me as a performer; it makes me feel uncomfortable. I like to treat performance as a composition also – a different beast. So on this Latitudes session, and when I play live generally, I think of it as me remixing my own work essentially. If my recorded music so far exists within one sphere, I’d like to try and move the live element to a completely different sphere – I don’t like the notion of being stuck in one place, or pigeon-holed, I guess."
