#red wig

This full-length follows an initial collaboration, Is this a House, between the punk frontman and the free jazz/electronics experimenter. But the first outing was looser and less song-oriented, full of spoken word and improvisatory flurries. Now with an expanded ensemble, including Søren Høj on drums and P.J. Fossum on synthesizers, these are no longer just arty collages, but rather kinetic sound sculptures that just happen to rock out.

Take “Shoelaces,” with pulses with suppressed fury, a rapid thump of kick drum doing battle with a sawed off guitar. The pace isn’t quick, but it’s packed with sensation, bursts of noise firing off in the milliseconds between drum beats. “Out in the Westlands” is less explosive but more insinuating. It veers vertiginously amid syncopations of high-hat and snare, its guitar a woozy rope-guide though complicated percussive patterns.

Sok is a writer, not just of songs but of books, so perhaps it makes sense to spend some time on the lyrics, which are novelistic. “Man Joke,” for instance, piles dreary details from a miserable man’s life on top of each other, the morning coffee and cigarette, the walk through the rain, and all the time returns to his inability to communicate with his partner. It’s plainly stated, but moving, as the furious thud of kick drum rumbles under dead-eyed observations. Notice how the last line pulls you up here: “He lit up a cigarette and he made circles with smoke/he put the ashes near the ashtray/the man became a joke.”

This is quite a good record, certainly of interest to fans of the Ex but also, more broadly, to anyone with a weakness for smart, disciplined post-punk.