Just unearthed some warehouse copies of the long out-of-print cassette version of Scorn's Gyral, released by the Earache sub-label Scorn Recordings back in 1996. It's a classic slab of dark, doom-laden industrial dub/trip-hop from the former drummer and founding member of grindcore gods Napalm Death, Mick Harris; along with Painkiller/Bill Laswell, Techno Animal and Ice, Scorn was one of the most fearsome practitioners of post-industrial dub in the 90's, fusing grim electronic ambience with dub-heavy break beats and spacey effects.

    1995's Gyral was the first with Mick Harris as the sole member following the departure of Nic Bullen, and the sound is appropriately sparse and skeletal, a reductionist version of the band's previous industrial dub sound. The pounding languid break beats are wound into looping circular mantras that anchor the dark, ominous ambient drift and electronic ether that float by, sonar pings and fragments of piano echoing through the shadows, percussive samples locked into air-tight tic-tok grooves, snares popping and leaving incandescent tracers dissolving against the blackness, the speaker-rattling bass coiling almost subliminally in the background. The whole atmosphere of Gyral is dreamlike and ambient, not quite as apocalyptic as releases like Deliverance, but definitely still quite sinister and bleak, with none of the vocals that were so prominent on prior albums. Eight tracks: "Six Hours One Week", "Time Went Slow", "Far In Out", "Stairway", "Forever Turning", "Black Box", "Hush", "Trondheim - Gavle". Gyral is an engrossing slab of industrial trip-hop/dark ambient dub, one of Harris's most hypnotic and heavy-lidded albums, and another personal favorite of mine from Scorn. Extremely limited!