Since forming in 2006 post-punk experimentalists Sebastian Melmoth have been on a thoughtful and adventurous musical journey. In a constant state of aural evolution, the London-based four-piece has a delivered a string of albums and EPs that variously touch on everything from garage-rock, grunge and lo-fi pop, to electro, new wave, dark ambient and music concrete, all the while drawing on a myriad of literary and artistic influences.

The band’s first release for Artificial Dance digs deep into their admirable and eye-opening catalogue and draws together some of the Amsterdam-based label’s favourites from the more electronic end of the band’s output. Entitled “The Dynamics of Vanity” – a comment on Western culture’s obsession with rehashing the past and the band’s own in-built distrust of artistic naval-gazing – the set is not a ‘best of’ retrospective but rather a ‘sort of’ selection of stylistically interconnected cuts that gives a very specific snapshot of the band’s work.

Check for example “Icarus”, a drowsy, hypnotic and sample-laden soundscape that effortlessly joins the dots between post-rock, pitched-down electronica and early morning ambient, or the slowly unfurling throb of thought-provoking opener “The Engineering of Consent”, a swelling, melancholic post-jazz meditation on propaganda and governmental mind control featuring spoken word samples from William S Burroughs in conversation with Brion Gysin, Timothy Leary, Les Levine and Robert Anton Wilson.

The showcased songs are typically hard-to-pin-down, too, with the re-imagined gothic horror break-up cut “Prosopagnosia’ and slow-burn audio addition of “Waiting For Godot” being joined by the wide-eyed morning dream-pop hallucinations of “Seeds (Descent Into Decadence)”. It all adds up to a collection that expertly showcases one engaging thread – of many – running through Sebastian Melmoth’s esoteric body of work.

Waiting For Godot

Prosopagnosia

Artist: Sebastian Melmoth 
Album title: Imaginary Futures
Label: MFZ Records
Total length: 57:10
Format(s): CS, DL, Stream

Tracklist: 

Side A (26:17)

Wrong Side of the Sun (DTT Mix)
Accidentally Grotesque (DTT Mix)
In the Nineties (Pete da Clinker Mix)
Sciatica (Pete da Clinker Mix)
Jesus Is a Girl’s Name (DTT Mix)

Side B (26:27)

Prosopagnosia (Private Plebs Mix)
Presley Honey (DTT Mix)
Prosopagnosia (Bass Clef Mix)
Evil Days (DTT Mix)
 Sunshine Blues (DTT Mix)

Bonus Track (04:21)

 Koan the Barbarian (Froz Mix)

Credits: 

All original music by Sebastian Melmoth. Lyrics by Ilia Rogatchevski. 
Produced by Sebastian Melmoth. Mixed and mastered by Peter Jordan at Clinker Central, January-February 2020. 

Sebastian Melmoth are: Peter Jordan (bass, vsts, voice), Tomoko Matsumoto (electronics, voice), Laura Michelle Smith (drums, voice) and Ilia Rogatchevski (guitars, synths, voice). 

Guitar and backing vocals tracks 2, 5 and 10 by Miranda Collett. Band photo by Artem Barkhin. Artwork by Hyperstasis.

Dedicated to the memory of Andrew Weatherall.

Koan The Barbarian (Froz Mix) [Bonus Track]

Sunshine Blues (DTT Mix)

Evil Days (DTT Mix)

Prosopagnosia (Bass Clef Mix)

Presley Honey (DTT Mix)

Prosopagnosia (Private Plebs Mix)

Jesus Is A Girl’s Name (DTT Mix)

Sciatica (Pete Da Clinker Mix)

In The Nineties (Pete Da Clinker Mix)

Accidentally Grotesque (DTT Mix)

Wrong Side Of The Sun (DTT Mix)

Sebastian Melmoth (2006-2020) was an experimental post-punk band from London.

Sebastian Melmoth

Popular tracks