Finlay Shakespeare’s background as a synth-hardware builder and live performer feeds into his work’s materiality. He treats his machines like they matter, their quirks, their limits, and the in/felicitous surprises they’re capable of becoming part of the music. Composed as a loop between recording, revising, and restructuring, a track might begin as a spontaneous patch-session or vocal improvisation, then undergo deep overdubs, rewrites and edits in an attempt to craft an aural time-capsule of Now. Modular electronics, brute synth-rhythms, and a vocal delivery that quakes with urgency thread into songs as anthemic as they are abrasive: oscillators hum, triggers fire, vocals elbow their way roughly into the red, yet there remains a pulse of pop structure behind the noise.

Founder of the synth maker Future Sound Systems, Shakespeare has worked with the likes of Throbbing Gristle’s Chris Carter to develop a line of Gristelizer components for the modular scene. Multiple releases across Editions Mego continue to push his aural research into new ears and territories.

• Directions Out Of Town, by Finlay Shakespeare

• Directions Out Of Town, by Finlay Shakespeare