TO MAKE A FOOL ASK, AND YOU ARE THE FIRST

It picks up where the nerve-damaged exotica of 2015's A Shimmering Replica left off...acerbic "surf"

guitar and synthetic salt-breeze fit for the Tropic of Yorkshire. Instant immersion in a potent, pungent

psychedelia that feels equal parts cosmic and aquatic. What Todd wrenches out of his instrument these

days is a language unto itself - a helical, grieving howl...a (super)natural efflorescence, beyond earthly

description or...ur-rock and post-everything. Equal emphasis is given here to pulsating machine rhythms

and lush keyboard textures, with contributions Mel O'Dubhshlaine. There were pre-echoes of all this in the recent Fluctuants and

Aero Infinite: but "To Make A Fool" feels like the fullest expression of something which was only glimpsed in those earlier works.

The side-long 'Spray Two' - gently eddying string-pads gradually slashed with fraught piano improvisations - is a masterpiece in

its own right. At its delirious peak, the whole thing boils over into brooding, arpeggiated noir-techno - Michael Mann's steadicam

roaming Leeds' B-roads, some kind of tangerine nightmare - before finally cooling into a bleary starfield of pure and sumptuous

hypno-tone. This is a trip, in the most skull-splitting, soul-crinkling sense of the word, but it soothes and heals as well. A circular

and transformative journey to the other side of the underneath and a landmark recording from one of the most adept and visionary

nodes in Britain's freakout underground.