Ten thousand years ago, a man died in what would become Somerset. His bones waited in a cave until 1903, when they were discovered and given a name: Cheddar Man. Now he’s the subject of a song by Voka Gentle, who use his story to contemplate what we’re doing to the places where people have lived for millennia. “Let’s say the sea levels rise and we lose north Somerset, which, by the way, is looking increasingly likely…” William J Stokes’s voice is dry, conversational, with the studied neutrality of a local news presenter. Beneath it, the music shuffles and twitches, glassy and off-kilter; post-punk refracted through Laurie Anderson’s deadpan intelligence.
The album circles power from multiple angles: a photoshoot, a Greek tragedy, a preacher on the radio, examining how it moves through bodies, relationships, and institutions. The way it corrupts some people and crushes others. The way we learn to live alongside it, or don’t. Power operates just as insidiously in the intimate sphere: ‘You Deserve It!’ addresses loving someone making destructive choices, its vocals recorded down a phone line, percussion constructed from breath and bouncing basketballs.
The band have said Domestic Bliss came together during a turbulent period in their three lives, but they’re quick to point out that every exhausted generation since the dawn of civilisation has had its share of existential dread. Cycles of suffering churn through human history, time after time. Power is a constant: always present, always in flux. It’s this long view that gives the album its strange authority. Radiohead’s the obvious reference – Stokes’s vocal on ‘Jude Law for Vogue (1995)’ occasionally lands in Thom Yorke territory. But These New Puritans is the more useful touchstone; both bands share that instinct to use conventional instruments as raw materials for something else entirely. ‘Creon l’ plays like Dry Cleaning’s sinister twin, spoken word threading through electronics that seem to be eating themselves. The record is littered with odd sounds and field recordings: binaural captures of Morris dancers and motorbikes, synths playing themselves with jammed keys. They’re destabilising elements that prevent you from getting comfortable, a sonic analogue for living under systems of power you can’t control.
The figure of Creon appears twice across the record – the deputy from Greek myth who preferred his number-two position precisely because it offered influence without accountability. He’s a useful archetype because he’s everywhere once you start looking: in boardrooms and in government, in any hierarchy that lets people avoid responsibility while enjoying its fruits. Elsewhere, Jude Law in his 1995 prime becomes a meditation on beauty as a form of power, borrowing Yeats to wonder aloud about the cost of gods and worship. ‘Torpedo Mike’ gives us an American evangelical, all Talking Heads nervous energy and absolute certainty. Portishead’s trip-hop bleeds into ‘Battle Sequence (I’m Atomic)’, while the drowsier ‘You Deserve It!’ could pass for an avant-pop lullaby. The emotional register stays measured, which suits an album more concerned with systems than feelings.
The band uses sound itself to think through ideas. Ellie Mason’s access to vintage Kraftwerk synths at Mute Records, Stokes’s PhD work on extreme-volume composition, Imogen Mason’s sound art practice – these are the actual tools of the songwriting. ‘The Creature’ exists entirely as piano in various states of preparation and processing, a spidery thing that stalks through five minutes without ever quite resolving. There’s something bracingly English about Voka Gentle’s refusal to look away from discomfort while maintaining a sense of the absurd. The clarity is in that split focus: horror and beauty occupying the same frame.
