Unloved - Polychrome (2023) [Hi-Res]

Polychrome: painted, printed, or decorated in several colours.

The record starts with a murmur of percussion and a metallic grind, as if the in-house band on a space station were warming up for the last show of the night. As phased vocals zoom through the heart of the track, Polychrome builds and builds to create a swooning hypnosis that’s part Tropicalia, part BBC Radiophonic Workshop and part psilocybin swoosh. Disorientating, strange, compelling, Polychrome is the opener and title track of Unloved’s first album of 2023.

Over the last few years, Unloved have developed their own uniquely cine literate sound that draws a straight line from the moody, doom obsessed girl group records of the early 1960s to the sonic experiments of electronic pioneers like Delia Derbyshire and Silver Apples via the darkest corners of David Lynch films and the crisp, mono beauty of the French New Wave. Polychrome sees the band take a deeper dive into their world, with eight new tracks recorded at the same time at the band’s recently released third long player, The Pink Album, along with a welcome reappearance of Far From Here, a glorious widescreen tower of sound originally recorded and released as part of the band’s first EP, 2015’s Guilty of Love.