Richard Smith, perhaps best known as L/F/D/M and one half of Bronze Teeth, is putting out his debut album on Walls’ consistently excellent Ecstatic Recordings imprint. M Is A Shape follows up his 2013 debut EP on Optimo Trax, Purple Maps, and a brace of Bronze Teeth EPs on Diagonal last year. Says Smith: "The title comes from a time when I was producing all these collages, abstracting a theme, trying to get it down to the perfect motif, the perfect shape that summed up exactly what I’m trying to get across and then just when I got there I kinda stepped back and was like; oh it’s just a fucking M! The same M that if I had looked at it a month before I would have perhaps only saw the letter and not the shape, that always interested me; the starting point at where you come to an image, one day something can just really catch you off guard."
Before it’s out next Monday, January 19, Ecstatic have kindly given us a spin of the A-side’s drum machine workout ‘Insect Cylinders’, which revels in close-feeling bass thumps and hi-hat itch shot through with science lab synths and rides out on a particularly glorious, warm kick drum throb. Get your fill above, and head over to Ecstatic’s Bandcamp to order the special edition, which comes on white vinyl and with an A3 insert. Once you’ve done that, read our interview with Bronze Teeth and get hold of tickets for them supporting Perc at our gig, with tQ’s goth crate-diggers Hamburger Ladies on the decks, at Birthdays on March 19 from See Tickets, Eventbrite, Stargreen and Songkick.