BAMBARA - Birthmarks LP (colour vinyl)

Limited edition red colour vinyl.

Long-time store favourites are full of nocturnal dread.

Reid Bateh's voice crawls through these songs like Lou Reed swallowed whole by David Lynch's subconscious, all that Freudian death drive stuff Lacan used to write about before he got boring.

The bass lines throb like Suicide's ghost sessions with Massive Attack, which shouldn't work but does because Graham Sutton understands that Angelo Badalamenti already solved the noir soundtrack problem in 1990.

The Depeche Mode comparisons are lazy but accurate. These guys know their Ballard, their Bataille, that whole transgressive literary moment when sex and violence got all mixed up in European cinema. Elena's Dream sounds like something Godard would have scored if he gave a sh!t about trip hop.

Not revolutionary but genuinely spooky, which counts for something when most rock bands sound like they're afraid of the dark.