Belfast-based musician, Cathal Cully, aka Group Zero, escaped lockdown by working through his archive of musical ideas and sketches. Playfully, and purposefully, making anything weird, weirder. The first reconstructed results are released today – October 22nd – as an E.P. – Everyone’s Already Come Apart – for Touch Sensitive. A collection of five darkly cinematic tracks, kinda kosmische-influenced “techno”. Not pounding, but marching, to a muted 4 / 4. Where slow, sleazy, beats bully sinister, submerged, spoken word samples, and poignant pianos, heavy with reverb, sit atop military snares and rhythms. The manufactured melodies arriving as epic synth fanfares, or ceremonial keys. The poppier moments recalling a rougher, rawer, amped-up Human League. Dare, now “do or die”, pushed into the red. Not glossy, or polished, but a gritty and grainy, plugged-in, programmed, psychedelia, instead. 

The Club Singer is discordant disco. Bass in the driving seat, sine waves singing with an increasingly electric buzz. Throughout machines mimic (Steve) Reich-ian ringing. The electro arpeggios rippling, in wave after wave, urged on, encouraged, by computerized hand-clapping. Alien sirens sounding above it all. 

Group Zero`s Everyone’s Already Come Apart is released today, October 22nd, on Touch Sensitive.