Robert Beatty (Hair Police) back with one of his mental beat-offs as Three Legged Race. On the first in a series of proposed 'Rope Commercial' EPs, Beatty bucks preconceptions of his strange solo project with an expanded instrumental palette now incorporating processed dulcimer and piano alongside tape and electronics to deviate from any predictions for another album of rhythm-driven narratives. Rather than the noise/techno crossover we had him pegged with, he's headed an experimental, genre-free vector at once drawing parallels with El-G and Jo Tanz' Opéra Mort, his Wolf Eyes buddy Nate Young, or Den Haag's Shitcluster, taking a wayward trip from the awkward cadence of 'All Ajax Dial' thru the aquatic exotica of 'Aside From Each Other and Together Overnight' to oily bleep sequences reminding of Tomutonttu, and the stumbling, stodgy groove abstraction 'Rope Commercial'. Ultimately it's a distorted, distended reflection of modern underground movements revelling in impurity and unfidelity.
