Kiiōtō ★★★
As Dust We Rise
NUDE. CD/DL/LP
Atmospheric collab between half of Lamb and Urban Cookie Collective founder.
“I was born in the living room,” sings Lou Rhodes on Hem, the opening track on As Dust We Rise, guttering piano and flickering backing vocals casting strange shadows around her. “My mama nearly died there.” It’s a dramatic start to the debut from Lamb frontwoman Rhodes and keyboardist (and entomologist) Rohan Heath, the man behind 1993 dance hit The Key The Secret. The pair’s fierce storytelling drive powers these songs: New Orleans provides material for the languid Josephine Street and Spanish Moss; Painkiller is an ironically smooth opioid-crisis love song, while the parlour trip-hop of Song For Bill pays tribute to jazz pianist Bill Evans. Rhodes’s richly grained voice elegantly sets every scene but As Dust We Rise is best on the Beth Gibbons starkness of Hem, or Ammonite’s glitchy automata pop, the duo’s experimental impulses pushing them into stranger shapes.