New music from the sibling electronica duo captures them at their most harsh and urgent in anticipation of their debut album.

Words: Lloyd Bolton | Photo: Itamer Asher

Brother-sister duo uh create some of the most unique, insistent electronic music coming out of the capital right now. Live shows swirl between ambient builds, spoken interludes and throbbing climaxes. With the release of new single ‘hit’, they have announced their debut album ‘Humanus’, which comes out on PRAH next February. We have reason to be excited.

‘Hit’ is a four-minute slice of that fizzing dread dance that creates the catharsis of uh’s live sets, captured in isolation here as a snapshot of their futuristic musical landscape. From the first second it is urgent, holding the listener with its pulse throughout. Unlike previous single, ‘attention’, which has an incredibly expansive range of timbres and moods, this feels like one train of thought, defined by growing intensity surmounted by Finnouala Kennedy’s vicious vocal declarations, which themselves go on to be crippled and repurposed by echo. The economy and insistence of the music gives it a Bush of Ghosts, edge-of-seat tension, offset by the cool melodic clicks that answer each pulse.

This is one of the more brutal cuts from uh, defined by fierceness and anxious energy. The vocals are especially unsettling in a manipulated state, coming as if yelled from behind a door locked from the outside. While the ‘Humanus’ project explores the range of human – and perhaps posthuman – experience, this cut represents its most sinister qualities. Yet that is no reason for it not to be groovy.

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