Worriedaboutsatan: Falling But Not Alone

With the amount of quality new music landing in our inbox over the past week, already there’s a feeling that 2023 is going to be a special one around these parts.

Starting with worriedaboutsatan: the brainchild of Bradford artist, Gavin Miller.

Formerly a two-piece that included Tom Ragsdale (Pijn, Sulk Rooms), on worriedaboutsatan’s excellent debut long-player, Falling But Not Alone, Miller goes it alone to great effect.

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With a brand of cascading electronica that lights up the experimental landscape, on Falling But Not Alone, Miller pits sharp emotional weight against warehouse euphoria. It’s a hard thing to achieve without coming off as cheap and derivative, but in a similar vein to HVOB, Miller has spent years tinkering and gleaning in a bid to hit that sweet spot. Here with very much his own voice, Miller delivers a confident, immediate set of recordings.

Produced by Nadja’s Aidan Baker Falling But Not Alone begins with All Is Lost. Featuring Manchester experimental duo She The Throne, All Is Lost is a concoction of Capac’s beyond music hybrid and the AM dread of early Massive Attack. It’s the kind of start that has you reaching for the former’s stunning debut, Sea Freeze.

With slick, outer world-like production, Goodbye from a Slowly Sinking Ship draws from the grimy floors of Berlin techno and forward-thinking passages of post-rock. Like meticulously extracting teardrops from the eye, Goodbye from a Slowly Sinking Ship is something that could have featured on Jon Hopkins’ Music For Psychedelic Therapy.

Then there’s Hours Pass. Scouring the bone-cold floors Andy Stott once inhabited during the days of Luxury Problems, Miller adds new layers and textures, travelling beyond the post-punk and industrial worlds the Manchester producer dismantled during the last decade.

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Unravelling like an eerie mist, closing cut Hang In There, Baby! suddenly transforms into a series of defiant soundscapes that all good records should end with. Pulsating beats that are the blood pumping through the organs of electronica, it’s not only a defiant end to Falling But Not Alone. It’s a beautiful one, too.

While 2022 was a year that provided few electronic releases that really got under your skin, with Falling But Not Alone worriedaboutsatan makes sure that 2023 starts off in total contrast.

A record that sounds better than anything from the last 12 months in this space, it’s unusual that the marker has been put down so early. But that it has with Falling But Not Alone – a record that will be hard to shift from the turntable platter anytime soon.

Falling But Not Alone is out Friday via Wolves and Vibrancy. Pre-order here.