B.A.A.D.M. 007

Mathieu Serruys – Skin/Glove

• LP
• Edition of 300
• 2019

• A1.Les Temps Blancs
• A2.The Landing
• A3.Glove
• B1.Skin
• B2.Suddenly You're With Me, I Turn And You're Not There
• B3.Cheval Blanc

Skin/​Glove is the sec­ond LP by Belgian musi­cian Mathieu Serruys, fol­low­ing the release of his B.A.A.D.M. debut On Germaine Dulac back in 2014. Compiled over the course of a fort­night, the record fea­tures mate­r­ial recorded over the past five years: creaks of ice buck­ling under heat, thick hums like nau­se­at­ing headaches, plumes of evap­o­rated organ hymns, frost­bit­ten crack­les of dying tape loops. These dis­parate sources are uni­fied by the per­va­sive cor­ro­sion of pain and time, which presses into the sur­face of every sonic object. Melodies splin­ter under the strain of being pulled apart; drones trem­ble under the gath­er­ing grav­ity of fatigue; dis­so­nances flicker like can­dles on the brink of extin­guish­ment. Yet despite the emo­tional den­sity of the mate­r­ial itself, the process of com­po­si­tion pro­vides a route toward com­pre­hend­ing how these sounds and expe­ri­ences are con­nected. Skin/​Glove reads as a con­stel­la­tory map of adver­sity and grief, beau­ti­fully coa­lesced through the cathar­tic dis­tance of ret­ro­spect, haunted by the sibi­lant whis­pers of dis­tinct mem­o­ries in dia­logue, lat­ticed by lesions that fate­fully and poignantly intersect.