Review: Tarquin Manek – Tarquin Magnet

 

Tarquin Manek
Tarquin Magnet

Blackest Ever Black
Street: 11.20.15
Tarquin Manek = Diamond Terrifier + Nate Young + Mike Shiflet

Tarquin Manek’s latest on Blackest Ever Black is a vehicle driven by nefarious purposes—from its opening salvo of a constantly repeating synth arpeggio against reedy clarinet lines to the blistering scrape of a violin and sturdy blasts of short-wave dissonance. That direction and clarity found on the opening track, “Sassafras Gesundheit,” however, is not really captured again until “Perfect Scorn,” which whips up 10-plus minutes of oscillating fury, haunted synths and ominously distant percussion. As a member of F ingers and Tarcar, Manek is responsible for some of the more unsettling albums I’ve heard this year. Magnet, anchored by two fantastic long-players, doubles down on the stereo blackness and seasick nature of his compositions to create a perfectly consuming auditory cocoon of processed sound. –Ryan Hall