KARHIDE – ROUGH SLEEP

Karhide,  aka Tim Waterfield, has been programming beats for as long as DJ Shadow – but where Josh Davis came from a background of hip hop culture and breakbeats, Tim’s electronic upbringing in the East Midlands was through the industrial-strength beats of Godflesh and Frontline Assembly.

Cutting his teeth in the now-legendary ‘Big Black-but-one-louder’ Nottingham duo Ann Arbor, Tim has been refining and distilling a long lineage of electronica and guitar music for more than a decade, reaching his purest statement of intent with Karhide, more than twenty years since he picked up his first drum machine.

Karhide records take a blowtorch to the heavyweight guitars of Jesu and Pelican and fuse them to crushing beats and drifting electronica that increasingly take their cue from the most out-there explorations of Four Tet as much as the devastating beatwork of Squarepusher.

What’s even more remarkable is that every instrument on the record is played by Tim (who only brings in the best drummers he can find to attempt to match his devilish programming) – and that he can pull this stuff off live too, with the precision of Slint and the chest-quaking volume of Jesu.

Years of playing alongside bands including Pitchshifter, Refused, The Get Up Kids, Karate, Oxbow and Fudge Tunnel have turned Tim – and Karhide – into a seasoned live outfit, easily outmatching most bands’ volume and intensity with his one-man show. There’s no need for vocals to get in the way when there’s intensity, power and stately melody running through every moment of a Karhide set.

His “Rough Sleep” EP is out on Field Records on the 17th June.  The title track was originally composed for a fundraising compilation for homelessness charity Shelter (Music For A Good Home 2), for which Karhide was asked to contribute alongside such luminaries as Wire, Four Tet, Karma To Burn and Ride.

We had an early listen.  Here’s what we thought:

Title track ‘Rough Sleep’ has an audible alarm beeping and  threading its way through the thicket of military style drums (thus the ‘Rough Sleep’ context perhaps?) A kraken of slow moving voluminous bass notes then wades through the distorted reed-bed of sounds.

The rhythms caused by the wavelets are not unlike Seventies Style Black Sabbathy rock. The sounds then turns a different tide – towards a Genesis sounding prog-rock omelette of fainted patters and spatters.   The overall effect is calming and reassuring.

‘Piano Run’  has the same wriggle-some morning alarm beats, this time creating a more contorted, jagged sound.  The piano takes great manful strides through the piece – and the movement builds up in peaks – then disperses like the first morning tide. Leaving muddy puddles of liquid synth and beautiful piano.

‘Daydream’ starts like one of those Ennio Morricone sound tracks – haunting, melancholy and sweaty. You can feel the tension in every flick of the side-winders tail and every buzzing mosquito bite. Little by little,  a pile of shebeen drums and knocked off bottle-tops comes to the fore. And then the strings create some edgy spectral tension.

– © Neil Mach May 2013 –

Link: https://www.facebook.com/karhide

Pictures by: © Simon Kallas
www.simonkallas.com