Scaler (for­mer­ly Scalp­ing) have part­ly built their rep­u­ta­tion on intense and immer­sive per­for­mances and while noth­ing could have pre­pared me for that first expe­ri­ence of see­ing them live, I’ve con­tin­ued to be blown away by their raw vis­cer­al ener­gy. They man­age to trans­fer that pow­er to their record­ed out­put too.

Debut album Void was released in 2022 and now, three years on, the Bris­tol quar­tet return with End­less­ly (Black Acre, Sept 26), a more expan­sive and col­lab­o­ra­tive work. End­less­ly was record­ed in the base­ment stu­dio of local Bris­tol venue The Louisiana and ref­er­ences the city’s musi­cal her­itage, draw­ing on ele­ments of every­thing from trip-hop, DnB and exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­i­ca, to pupil-dilat­ing tech­no, met­al and drill, refract­ing those influ­ences through the band’s indus­tri­al lens

End­less­ly is also an album made to be expe­ri­enced in its entire­ty, not just dipped into here and there. That’s how you’ll trace its jour­ney, start­ing in famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry before push­ing into new and sur­pris­ing spaces before retreat­ing again. Tem­per­a­ture-wise, this album takes us from ice-cold to sweaty heat and back again.

The first track qui­et when it speaks feels like a nat­ur­al start­ing point with famil­iar Scaler indus­tri­al tex­tures and a tense, cin­e­mat­ic, Bladerun­ner-esque feel. Sounds echo and crack­le, rebound­ing off harsh sur­faces. This flows into Salt, the first of sev­er­al col­lab­o­ra­tions that brings a new, soft­er dimen­sion to Scaler’s work as Akiko Haruna’s spec­tral vocals call out and weave through per­cus­sive lay­ers. Bro­ken Entry retreats back again to a heart-pound­ing, metal­lic and hos­tile world, as does Cold Stor­age which is, as the title sug­gests, an omi­nous sound­ing num­ber radi­at­ing tex­tur­al bleeps while muf­fled human sounds reach out to you through a fog.

Two expres­sive and emo­tive col­lab­o­ra­tions shine: Mirage, was writ­ten for Art School Girl­friend – a lush, seduc­tive and mea­sured track, with its empha­sis on the soft vocals and lyrics, “falling end­less­ly into visions of you. Cross the stream of life, stuck in the new’. And pre­vi­ous­ly released as a sin­gle, Evolve breaks into dance-floor eupho­ria with vocals by Tlya X An, a Bris­tol-based artist whose vocal har­monies cre­ate an almost pop-inflect­ed lift. 

Anoth­er banger radi­at­ing a bliss­ful ener­gy and made for the dance-floor is Sink­ing In; a strong­ly visu­al num­ber that leads you into its core in order to aban­don you, leav­ing you dis­ori­en­tat­ed; it’s a swampy, sweaty num­ber pro­pelled by drum beats and a slick bassline.

The col­lab­o­ra­tions have enhanced Scaler’s sound in unex­pect­ed ways. As band mem­ber Isaac-Jones notes, “When you work clos­er with oth­er artists, they take the lead more, so you’re much more open to let­ting go of things that you’d usu­al­ly hyper-fix­ate on.” That will­ing­ness to loosen con­trol is a key change, allow­ing the record to radi­ate warmth with­out sac­ri­fic­ing intensity.

Band mem­ber James Rush­forth is quot­ed as say­ing: “This record is kind of the one we want­ed to make the whole time”. End­less­ly proves that Scaler have a lot more ideas up their sleeve and I’m glad they got to make it.

Scaler End­less­ly Black Acre, release date Sept 26
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