Bobby Krlic’s debut album as The Haxan Cloak was hands-down one of our favourite records of last year. He’s since released a session LP for Southern’s Latitudes series and signed to London label Tri Angle – home to the likes of Howse, Holy Other and Vessel – for the upcoming release of his second album proper.
In a brief interview with Drowned In Sound, Krlic has revealed a little about what it’s likely to sound like. "Tonally, it’s treading a similar path," he said. "However, this record differs thematically from the first. So there is a shift instrumentally; the record is almost entirely electronic. Bar one song, there are no strings. There’s a handful of orchestral percussion scattered around the record, but this has been heavily processed."
Given the direction his live sets have taken since the release of his album, and the newly added percussion that wound its way into his Southern release The Men Shall Part The Sea To Divide The Water, that he’s chosen to move into more electronic territory is unsurprising. On his debut album he recorded all the instruments – including its distinctive squawking cello lines – himself. For the new one, he suggests his process has been less about keeping his recorded source material intact and more about "breaking all the sounds down – kind of crushing them to a powder and painting with them."
He’s staying tight-lipped about the ideas that have informed the new record, but teases that "when it is revealed, the approach I have taken will make a lot of sense. This record has come to fruition a lot quicker than the last, but I think the theme of the last one only came to me as the pieces were emerging, whereas with this, I knew what it had to sound like before I even started writing it."
