Now, where to begin with Electric Mud – as it will surely be necessary to start near to the beginning to explain an outfit like this, who will be unjustly unfamiliar to a lot of potential listeners I am certain. First and foremost, Electric Mud are a German instrumental progressive rock duo, consisting of Hagen Bretschneider and Nico Walser. That’s the easy part – from there it gets tricky, because to seek to understand these guys from any single album is like the old story of trying to identify an elephant blindfolded – you might get the tail and think it’s a worm, or the trunk and think it’s a snake, but either way you’d be a long way from the full picture. The easiest thing is probably to look at this album and its predecessor, The Deconstruction Of Light – the latter 2018 release being the point at which the current duo solidified, after three previous albums. That album was a sort of re-imagining of earlier material, with newly composed parts sitting alongside rearrangements to produce a result superior to its roots in almost every respect. Deconstruction was quite a violent album, discordant, industrial passages clashing with great squalling guitar riffs as if battling over the right to dominate the band’s identity, while quieter notes made themselves heard when they could penetrate the drama. It was a remarkable listen, and highly recommended. So, you might reasonably expect more of this same winning formula, and a chaotic, Crimson-esque ‘difficult listen’ with this n