Glaswegian trio UNION OF KNIVES feature Chris Gordon (Deckard/ Baby Chaos and producer/ mixer of more bands from north of the border than you can shake a stick at), keyboard player Craig and a third guy called Dave who is credited as the band’s ‘sound sorceror’, which all sounds very Harry Potter, doesn’t it?
Their first EP “Evil Has Never” found UOK shaking up an atmospheric cocktail of sound too, and their second four-track outing again finds them grubbing around in noir-ish corners. The opening title track opens with the scene-setting lines “let’s stop stabbing in the dark/ let’s go walking in the park” and – despite the blissful keyboard counterpart – sounds pretty much as dark and clammy as you would expect. It’s nothing all that new, but with guitars strafe-ing and echo-ing all over the shop and a suitable reprise negotiated at 2 mins 40 it’s a likeably spooked ride regardless.
“Back To School” and “Is Sweetheart” continue on to pick and mix elements from the dark side, proffering Bristolian trip-hop beats, ricocheting dub elements, strands of DJ Shadow, compressed vocals a la Eels and even he occasional Cocteau Twins guitar echo on the latter. It’s good and undeniably memorable mood music, though at times it sounds a little stylised and fails to move you as much as you might like.
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The (I assume) self-tooled remix of “I Decline” winds things up and it alternates between all out Warp-style glitch (I can’t avoid the Aphex Twin comparison as well as a nod to Add N To (X)) and a desire to get down on the dancefloor. It’s claustrophobic, intriguing and at least tries hard, which is more than can be said for many such lazy ‘remix’ outings these days.
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