Nina Walsh has dusted off a further 3 tracks from her vast Woodleigh Research Facility archive, to present a varied trio of experimental electronics. Careful What You Wish For on the surface might seem like a straightforward dancefloor-directed machine march. Icy and gothic, sorta ceremonial and bombarded with Walsh’s signature laser blasts. With a spinning, spiralling bridge, bearing the air of a stridently stepping, modern retro-referencing Sci-Fi score. However, its smashing snares hide complex high hat patterns and odd, clipped conga fills.

I Do Like Bananas does away with the banging drums, and is instead abstract, but melodic, like something from Walsh’s former close collaborator Andrew Weatherall’s Two Lone Swordsmen, and the sides on her collectable cult turn-of-the-millenium label C-Pij. Very possibly a nod to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, perhaps via the DIY of Joe Meek, it’s a collage of diced drones, snatches of chimes, felt mallets on metal, bursts of steam and echoed sirens that feels like a mutated 70s UK TV theme. 

Riding The Mistral restores the momentum, with a bubbling bass-line and rippling robotic rhythm  that recall Power, Corruption & Lies era New Order. Mellower than the EP’s opener, it’s graced with gentle guitar picking, beautiful bent notes – which could be a nod to Neu!’s Michael Rother – and sound effects that mimic the titular Mediterranean breeze. 

Walsh has also released 2 tracks under her own name. Providing words and vocals to music created by a couple of talented collaborators. Sail We Must, originally composed for celebrated TV show, Killing Eve, is a beaten but defiant ballad delivered in Walsh’s best Marianne Faithful. Bassist Dan Connolly’s sparse upright bass anchors her lead, and spectral whispers, amid eddies of  theremin thin whistles and assorted bowed electric and acoustic strings. Carnie cymbals crash and halfway through the song hits a burlesque stripper strut, summoning something sonically and tonally similar to early Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. 

Leon Thompson – ex of Holy Ghost Inc., the crew behind “rave” classics Walk On Air and Mad Monks On Zinc – supplies the musical setting for Shadow Roller. A collision of post-punk funk and motorik, it’s a PiL-influenced piece with both a bold Jah Wobble-esque B-line and angular Keith Levene-like axe work. Walsh, encouraging a bruised / abused companion, sighs “Together we can rise” and, at only 3 and a half minutes, the track cries out for a lengthy dub-disco extension. 

Maximum Vaultage Vol. 2 can be bought directly from Bandcamp. Sail We Must can be also ordered digitally from Bandcamp, and physically from Big Cartel.