Artist: Chelsea Grin
Title: Face Lifter
Format: 12" Single
Label: Sabrettes
Catalogue Number: SR016
Year of Release: 1994
Tracklisting:
A Face Lifter
B Face Lifter (A Movin' & A Groovin' In The Morgue Mix)
And I thought I was a Chelsea Grin completist, having their two Sabrettes singles! Turns out there was a third - This Is Your Life... Man in 1996 for Primate Recordings.
It turns out Anna Haigh also provided vocals for early Weatherall project Bocca Juniors, Flowered Up's Egg Rush, and on The Paranoid on Red Snapper's Prince Blimey album of 1996. I only have the middle one of those three.
Angela Matheson was on remix duties for G-File's Overtime (no, me neither) sole release of Yume records, so no surprise if no one else has heard of it.
Face Lifter is a storming tune though. From the skitterish cymbal opening and big bass hit it's a winner. Things start so tentatively, sounds are introduced, the track starts to build, then it breaks down again. Once over an incongruous sitar sample, but it works. Analogue hell is unleashed about a third of the way through, and just as it seems like every new loop is going to be introduced, broken down, and then the track built up again a high pitched whine joins over a guitar lick, which suddenly breaks to just the guitar and drone, followed by threatening muttered voices and bass rumbles, ending in a discernible '... never find your way back home'.
It is simultaneously one of the oddest and most formulaic slabs of techno I have. The driving dance tune resumes, builds, and fades one final time. Still love it after all these years.
The B-side starts and ends with the muttered vocals, builds the same loops up, but fails to deliver the punch of the A-side, through entirely too much messing around and fading things in and out. The A-side more than makes up for the disappointment though.
