Bashful, Cryptic Beats For Invisible Rhymes - EP review

The former Walsall musician, now residing in Telford, has slowly been grabbing attention this past year, including stamping his authority on the handiwork of other local artists.

His remix of a track by Shropshire's former The Ticket Unsigned artists PUKK - Off Air - appears as the closing song for this.

But there is more than just clever new cuts of other people's work.

Bashful clearly has a keen ear for the robotic out there. Universal Tuning sounds like it his whirred straight out of the imagination of Stanley Kubrick. Its rising and falling wails accompanied by the incessant blipping of satellites creates a strangely compelling yet nauseating cacophony of noise.

READ MORE: PUKK, Crashing - EP review

Rise Of The Walking Dead is completely different. Its militaristic percussion permeates some deep, heavy bassline rumbles to create something much murkier. It's beautifully dense actually, haunting and disturbing in its execution.

The title track heads into Radiohead territory, the kind of truncated feedback that fed all throughout their 2003 record Hail To The Thief. It's stop-start nature is agitating yet all-consuming.

This sense of unease features a lot. It sounds like the EP might be irritating from the off - but this is nowhere near true. The constant alterations in style - sometimes mid-track - keep you constantly guessing. There's no falling asleep to similar-sounding electro warbles here.

Slightly disturbing once again is The White Knuckle Jester Rocket Ride aka Shake with its eerie use of vocals and recorded laughter to create a track that wouldn't be out of place being played in a crumbling, haunted asylum of yesteryear.

Shamrockin' Beats (St. Patrick's Day Off) lightens the mood a bit with its more fun-filled approach to life, but those warning sirens will again have you second guessing your sanity.

And the remix of PUKK's Off Air is both industrially heavy yet ice cream parlour smooth. Its large waves of sound wash over the senses and hold them in place.

Rating: 7/10

Bashful's EP is available to listen to on Spotify, as well as download via iTunes, Amazon Music, Google Play and Deezer. It's also available on his Soundcloud page.