Autumns has been active since 2014, when he debuted on Regis and Female’s uncompromising Downwards Records. Having been pretty prolific throughout the decade, Dyslexia Sound Source is his latest release, and fourth for Touch Sensitive. Along the way, from 2017’s Dyslexia Tracks E.P. to 2021’s Dyslexia Sound System LP, he seems to have streamlined his sonics. What began as an intense dark punk noise, like a techno take on bands like Big Black, has been stripped back to something perhaps more accessible. The chainsawing guitar riffs and feedback arcs, the machine gun MIDI-ing, are gone. Leaving a set of mechanical rhythms. Still manic, however, these too are less punishing, less brutal. Instead more tribal. The press one-sheet cites Cut Hands as a point of reference, and that’s absolutely spot-on. The industrial-edged percussion rattles in a very similar ritualistic way, but without any of William Bennett’s divisive Whitehouse baggage. The grooves are also less confrontational, less fierce, less furious, and in places, such as the opening, Phone Me, more dancehall derived. Digital Swing is sledgehammer snared electro-funk. Just To Say You Were There is synth poppy, but with snatches of echoed reggae soundclash siren. There’s maybe a little Muslimgauze in the mid-tempo, dub-splashed Raw Product. The beatless, “illbient” ambient atmospheres Holding A Sign To Be Recognised and 23 Summers, full of field recorded fauna and eavesdropped conversations are actually the most obsidian moments on the album.

Somethings remain, such as the overt On-U Sound influence. Interpretive Dance Is A Scam is shaken by Adrian Sherwood-esque mixing desk effects. Wild rimshots and ricochets. Purely Reasonable boasts Keith Leblanc / Tackhead-like beats. Its vocals resembling a distorted Mark Stewart mantra, while free jazz / Master Musicians Of Joujouka reeds drift, filter in and out of the mix. The voice on Buy Me A Cornet also recalls Gary Clail, further betraying the anonymous Autumns’ Bristolian roots.

Autumns’ Dyslexia Sound Source is out now on Touch Sensitive Records.