CIRCUIT BREAKER – Hands Return To Shake

Description

Circuit Breaker are a band split in half. On the one hand you have the jagged guitar and maudlin vocals of Peter Simpson, slotting into the lineage of expansive and gothic punk a la Killing Joke, Bauhaus, Wire, etc. On the other you have the contrastive production approach of his brother Edward, whose washes of glassy FM Synth melodies are counterbalanced with bursts of electronic harshness recalling artists such as Autechre & Pan Sonic.
‘Hands Return To Shake’ is the second full length from the London based group. It is also the second release from them for longstanding avant-punk label Harbinger Sound. Moving on from the previous record, ‘My Descent Into Capital’, ‘Hands Return…’ is a much more personal and emotive work. The orthodoxies of minimal synth and post punk are stretched and squeezed to breaking point in both a reaffirmation and a deconstruction of the duo’s many influences.
Embodying a fluid eclecticism that ties together industrial, minimal synth, post-punk, abstract electronic music and everything in between, ‘Hands Return To Shake’ is their finest work yet, a record marked by inspiration and their own increasingly elusive and individual direction.