STEALING SHEEP
WOW Machine (Both Sides)
Liverpool’s Stealing Sheep have retained their psychedelic sound but taken it to another level on their latest album. WOW Machine is a tour de force of intricate mechanical patterns combined with the feminist attitude of Sisters With Transistors, the documentary film cited as the main inspiration for the album.
From WOW Machine‘s opening track, you feel like you are entering a video game or an immersive sci-fi experience, which makes sense since Stealing Sheep’s album includes songs written for a live installation in 2018. The album has a loosely cyclical structure, with Don’t Think, Just Do as its nucleus: a 15-minute-long track in which melodic and percussive layers build organically to create a hypnotic contrapuntal texture.
But in amongst the spacey noises, the pinball sound effects, the overloaded synths and the modulated vocals, there are the delicate voices and melodic hooks of a band who are not afraid to try their hand at a concept album, summoning a visceral sonic landscape all of their own.
words ROSANNA LEWIS
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