After the blunted murk of their previous self-titled mini-album on Idle Hands, Amos 'Jabu' Childs and Sam 'Neek' Barrett return to the place where their most fragmented ideas manifest in fleeting glimpses of tracks. Theirs is a teasing approach, where all the facets of a fully formed track are condensed down to one or two minutes of distilled excellence.
Things have moved on since that previous eight-track skirmish (and indeed the excellentMemoryz Ov Ucassette on No Corner), as though someone has cracked the blinds in the cutting room where Childs and Barrett sit splicing together their bittersweet vignettes. "Oasis Weir" is an especially hopeful opening gambit with its sunkissed melodic inflections, but of course you can sense the disquiet behind the daydream. "I won't be long", the disembodied voice assures, but once you enter a record such as this time becomes something of an abstract. Even if it only lasts 20 minutes, listening toIDLE038yields as much depth as any long-form LP.
The point here is that the duo have left no room for fat. Every second of sonics counts for something, helping realise compositional perfection in a place free of arrangement, chasing the ultimate loop. From bruising darkness to heartbreaking beauty, the breadth and impact achieved in such a short space of time is testament to the continued development of this most precocious of Bristolian projects. It's another step on for O$MVM$M, and a further achievement for Idle Hands in the quest for ever more interesting sounds from the local area and beyond.