When I see than an album was recorded by Steve Albini and mastered by Bob Weston, I generally take it as something of a recommendation. Not that I love everything I've heard that they've worked on, but even then I can usually at least appreciate the production.
Sleepwalks play the kind of music that lends itself to the back-to-basics style Albini is so renowned for. Overdubs? Forget it. If the guitar sounds a bit thin, turn it up. With everything up loud and probably in one or two takes, 'The Milk Has Gone Sour' has an immediacy that's perfectly suited to their rough-hewn, hell-for-leather punky indie noise that's less about technical proficiency ( Kevin Fincham's ragged vocals only just approximate a tune at the best of times) than it is about cranking out a decent guitar-driven racket, which for the most part, they do.
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Some tracks are proper grungers, with 'Bile Duct' (one of the album's definite hilights) sounding like an outtake from 'In Utero' - and I mean that as a compliment. Just as Albini's hands-off approach to production captured the visceral rawness of Nirvana's angriest and least accessible album, so the approach works is well-suited to the tracks where Sleepwalks really go full throttle.
It's all over in 25 minutes. Spot on.
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