Cipher Productions

During a 2024 mischief hunt in Osaka, shortly after my release of the project’s self-titled tape, Mr No Guard told me he had some earlier project recordings for potential release. Hearing those five primal manifests of dismal electronics, blunt power electronics strike, and evocative samples I fully agreed, but thought the missive needed a different context to best appreciate its thematic misgivings.

Enter XAL, the post-industrial formation of Am Not, A and Mollusk King, equally in need of exposition. The XAL contribution of “Death Desire (Faith & Value)” is a bleak construct of sombre synths, junk percussion vibration and voices from the void, which draws on the compositional strengths of its collaborators and stalks out its own genre place with a slow boil of dystopian regret and incremental dynamics.

The resultant split cassette is released in an edition of 100 copies, chrome tapes in Norelco cases with art from Thomas C celebrating the fall of mankind.