Another Country $$$$: Cursed Frame, still moving

Cursed Frame was already a record in motion. On its Deluxe Edition, Another Country $$$$ have given four tracks over to different voices and different hands, and what returns disturbs the frame instead of adorning it. The album now feels like something still moving.

Another Country $$$$ consists of Sam Shorter and Oli Knight, a Manchester audio-visual duo who divide live drums, vocals, electronics and samples between themselves. They emerge from the post-White Hotel Salford scene that also yielded Crimewave and Silverwingkiller, and their debut record, GRIEF STRICKEN LISTED BUILDINGS, came out in 2020. Cursed Frame first surfaced earlier this year; this edition follows it on Spinny Nights, scheduled for 9 September.

The four additions are the reason to come back. Harriet Morley sings on an edit of awaken_trappedbetweenworlds; Moth is taken by Nil00; Body Farm is taken by BUFFEE, which returns titled BODY FARM ///, Vol. 2; Cursed Frame is taken by FLOCO. Each of the four runs shorter than the tracks they rework.

The sound comes in from the other side of the room. Voices emerge from fog, the bass keeps moving the floor beneath the track, and the softness you first notice turns out to be a thin skin stretched over something less easy. The duo term it "liminal heavy pop, hopecore breaks, distorted UKG and archival post-dance collage", and the album matches the description. It holds the euphoria of rave without landing as club music, shaped by the mood of clubs rather than made for them.

Another Country begins by repeating its line until it ceases to be a statement and turns into an invitation. The voice here carries the closeness of spoken verse, warm and corporeal against electronics that never stop shifting. Body Farm travels somewhere more alien: a tender, wistful, nearly weightless exterior, and beneath it a machine echoing the title with flat exactness. It feels like a list recited by someone detached from the body being named, and the soothing quality conceals something monstrous within it. Tether balances between ease and disquiet, human and machine, and refuses to descend to either side. It provides no answer, and it is sincere.

Moth is the most instantly melodic point here, a plangent theme running beneath fractured electronics with the emotional weight of Philip Reed's main theme for Hal Hartley's Trust. It sounds like a melody borrowed from memory. The title track is less concerned with predicting the future than with making what was once odd feel familiar: the future here isn't frightening, it's oddly nostalgic. Courtly Love Deluxe closes the original run, a title the deluxe edition now gets to share in.

This is for the listener who brings the club home instead of the one who needs it at 2am. Headphones, dim light, a record that treats the voice as one instrument among many and doesn't flinch at the machine. If you want the euphoria resolved into something you can dance to, Tether will frustrate you. If you want a record that maintains its own thresholds, the repeats improve with each pass.

The deluxe version doesn't complete the task. Another Country, Tether, and Courtly Love Deluxe remain untouched, so the opening track's invitation never receives a reply from a different voice. That's a minor gap in an otherwise thorough case. Cursed Frame (Deluxe Edition) gets a 4, since four of its seven tracks are designed to regenerate rather than ornament, and the underlying frame endures being relocated. Three of those are still awaiting another person's hands.

The tracklist

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