Somehow The Cult Of One snuck past me last year like a thief in the night, leaving me none the wiser that it even existed. It wasn’t until the debut album Monomaniac got the vinyl treatment courtesy of Éttu Skýt Records that it hit my radar. Given that this is the solo project of Singapore Sling’s own Henrik Björnsson I shouldn’t have been surprised that the project was so sly, but I still thought I was hip enough to his work that I would have seen this. Alas, I’m not as cool as I thought.
Henrik, however, oozes cool on Monomaniac. And not the kind of cool we use as a throw-away to mean something is simply good. It’s cool in the old school way, oozing with that rare type of bored earnestness, of caring intently about the outcome but not caring at all about what anyone thinks of it. Fans of other projects Henrik has been involved in, like Singapore Sling and Dead Skeletons, will recognize the sonic roots of The Cult Of One, the psych mixed with a dash of deathrock, the sonic palette filled to the brim with buzzing guitars and razor-like riffs, the vocals wafting through the music like coffee-soaked cigarette smoke. It’s not as dense as Singapore Sling, though, the playing more stripped back to the core, slow and methodical, the emphasis on the guitar and voice as an instrument, and that is its true strength. “Nothingoid” is the most fully realized example of this approach, the simple, repetitive riff easily providing enough fuel to propel the song, the droning vocals almost resigned as they speak of hate and emptiness before breaking free for a burst of feedback at the end. The David Lynch-ian “Bop ‘Til They Drop” brings images unbidden to your mind of an indifferent dancer in a blue satin dress, the film oversaturated to the point of blurriness and playing at a slightly slower speed than it should giving the whole thing a languid and viscous feeling. Oh, and the cover of “I Wanna Be Your Dog”? Exquisite.
The vinyl version of Monomaniac is limited to 250 copies on red vinyl and is currently available via Fuzz Club HERE. You may want to jump on this one – the vinyl sounds fantastic and I suspect it’ll sell out. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.