The music video for EP opener Crank really helps set the theme in Slicedub‘s 5-track follow up to 2022’s ‘Grotesque Coil’.

It features the duo kitted up like they spent a rough night at a recycling centre, dragging around their live performance setup in a busted trolley, cutting between different aspect ratios and compression settings, while mumbling at Aucklanders passing by – who really, really don’t want to be mumbled at by a high school drama department matinee adaptation of a Neill Blomkamp movie.

These are the vibes: grubby, crusty and post-industrial, even with the lively Mission Impossible dun-dun-dun-dun dundundun-dun bass hop.

‘Motions’, the new mix of lethargic dark dub brought forth by the Auckland/Aussie duo of Rumen Rachev and James Smith, spends its time lurching from a Snyderverse colour-graded soundscape with the occasional nod to the slow march of doom, to an unfortunately bleak demo-disk reel for a dark techno joint.

Dim begins with some smokey atmosphere and a clanking rhythm straight out of the big factory where they produce asbestos, before getting cheapened by the flat vocals, and what sounds like a wobble-board instead of a flange. There is a somewhat garish feel about the lyrics, as if the sharp whispering of “fire / in my eyes” and the more lively “gotta give it away”, delivered like a bloke trying to pawn off a dodgy Lazyboy recliner, was said with an expectation that, yes, these are dark and moody lyrics that you’d get from a track this obviously stark.

A high-point for this release are the midpoint tracks Fracture and Glass, respectfully, for how they are both closer to the ambience produced for Slicedub’s previous ‘Grotesque Coil’ album. Glass is something straight out of King Krule’s B-sides, scratchy guitar included, while the former, mostly a gunky instrumental, offers something more lively and optimistic.