LoneLady, Mallinder and Benge announce debut collaborative album Clinker
Post punk, electronic & industrial sounds collide on dream team trio’s first offering
Julie Campbell (aka. LoneLady), Stephen Mallinder (Wrangler, Cabaret Voltaire) and Benge (Wrangler,, John Foxx) have announced details of their new collaborative album, ‘Clinker’, out on October 13 via the label Les Disques Du Crepuscule.
The charge is led by the single ‘Camouflage’ and the six-track mini-album channels the post-punk, electronic and industrial genre tropes each artist is known for. Campbell is an acclaimed songwriter and producer known for her four-track cassette experiments as LoneLady, whiler Mallinder and Benge are known for their parts to play in seminal industrial and new wave acts Cabaret Voltaire and Ultravox. More recently, Mallinder and Benge formed the menacing electronic duo Wrangler, blending uptempo EBM beats with deep, disturbing vocals.
Campbell expanded on the new project’s inception: “(It) began a couple of years ago. Benge had these great sketches that were beats and synth patterns, so those were the starting point. I really went to town adding lots of guitar layers and experimenting with different sounds. On some tracks the guitar is deft and rhythmic, as if mimicking sequencer patterns. On others it’s a deconstructed noise-based approach – scratching strings, making fitful, heavy chunks, howls and scrapings of noise and texture.”
Due to competing solo commitments for all three members, the tracks were stowed into a hard drive for a few years, only to be worked on again later. Julie continues: “Last year we revisited the mixes and Stephen added his trademark mysterious and menacing vocals. Now we find ourselves with a finished piece of work. I thought of the name ‘Clinker’ as I love its meaning: ‘stony residue from burnt coal’. This seemed liked an apt description of both industrial and creative processes, and a nice nod to the industrial North of England.”
Mallinder and Benge added details of his own contributions. Mallinder said: “I’d forgotten how liberating it is to play bass guitar on something. It compliments Julie’s beautifully angular guitar, and Benge and me ripping up live percussion onto the sound of machines… As a collection of tracks these benefited from a lengthy gestation, as they follow no particular trend and were allowed to twist and turn to develop a life of their own. After successive cycles we suddenly drew it all together so the tracks have a sense of completion and identity.”
Benge said: “The real fun for me was during the mixing process when Mal and I looked at each other as the rawness of the tracks hit us on the big studio monitors. We knew we had something untameable, and wanted to preserve that feeling of edgy rawness in the mixes.”
800 copies of ‘Clinker’ will be released on limited turquoise vinyl; subsequent editions will see a black vinyl release. All vinyl editions come with a digital download of the album.