Cipher Productions

The Colour Of The Sky heralds the return of Distraxi to Brachliegen Tape with six tracks of hermetic pain electronics. Melting together saturated harsh noise wall with metallic vocals, heavy drones, and processed recordings of devotional hymns, Alina Church describes the release as thematically driving ‘towards absolutism from one’s body’ through an exploration of religious self-mortification and spiritual discipline.

Following on from recent releases on Outsider Art and Eggy Tapes, The Colour of the Sky finds Distraxi gouging her sound into punishing new forms. Emerging from the anchorhold after ascetic contemplation, Distraxi exhumes the history of self-flagellation in the Christian Church to reflect on the physical and mental experience of dealing with bodily alienation. Lyrically, The Colour of the Sky plays with gnostic themes of a veiled reality to frame the personal drive toward exoneration from regulating power structures and social expectations.

Donning her hair shirt and grasping her scourge, Distraxi ritually manipulates a variety of sound sources to craft blown-out canticles that centre around themes of shame, guilt and control. Self-flagellating at the altar of Christ with a contact mic, sonic explusions fly from the confessional and pummel the nave in the apotropaic pursuit of salvation. While the album’s A side assaults the listener as it careens between concréte sound manipulation, despairing lyrical abjection, DSP brutality and queasy rhythms, its long-form title track occupies the entirety of side B; functioning as a ritual aid in the pursuit of henosis, the 25 minute dirge obliterates any stable sense of time in a fugue of flangelated ecstasy.

The album calls to mind classic 83-86 era Current 93, the fully hopeless end of Lustmord, and Puce Mary’s early work on Posh Isolation – all while honing a relentless digital precision and focus.

Brachliegen, 2025. Recommended!