The Death of Rave come off life support with a definitive new full length by original rave deconstructionist and observant storyteller Dale Cornish, reflecting on the experience of gender-affirming surgery and the way people treat each other over ruggedly skewed dance music and bittersweet ballads crooned in pure Cronx tongue. It’s fully out-there, but a big big RIYL aya, HTRK, Leslie Winer, CoH, Pan Sonic.
One of the UK’s most fascinating DIY figures, Dale Cornish’s catalogue spans wry electroclash with No Bra, thru to Baraclough (aka the “Gay Whitehouse”) in the naughts, and then a notable streak of LPs in the 2010s that drily, playfully sowed the seeds for deconstructed club musics. In this decade, Dale strikingly found his voice on ‘Thug Ambient’ (2020) and the brilliant ‘Traditional Music of South London’ (2022), with the latter betraying a maturity of songwriting and displaced drum programming that finely braided his binds with the avant garde, ‘90s alt.rock and leading-edge queer club culture in a properly distinctive style.
Dale’s 2nd album for TDoR ‘Altruism’ now sees him further come into his own with 14 songs that sweat the small and big stuff - romance, friendship, capriciousness, and the process of transforming into “the body you deserve, the body of your dreams” (salute, HTRK!). On one level the album can be heard to chime with the times’ phase-shift to literal and upfront honesty, whilst on another it is offset with a rudely witted, pleasure-seeking palate of brute and sensory electronic pulses and tones, as rooted in the physicality of gay clubs and the textural lust of experimental musics. It’s all reliably carried off with a personalised, indomitable flair that side-eyes trends with healthy disdain.
Song to song he nails a strong balance between his brash live showmanship - the avant town crier poking gay drama on opener ‘Bring Out Your Dead’ - and introspective, minimalist songwriting, as in ‘Erase’, a tale about the complexities of non-monogamy, whilst also finding levity in the heaviness of gender-affirming surgery (for gynecomastia) on ‘New Chest’ set to upfront, gear-grinding club tropes. The latter in particular explores modern masculinity with a transcendent message of solidarity that, with Jonnine’s blessing, cannily flips a phrase from a HTRK classic to resounding ends, as only Dale can.
Throughout the album he navigates nuances of Gay relationships with a poetic frankness, dialling everything down to a rapt hush as he “savours every detail” in the stark confession of ‘Blindspot’ and deeply woozy reminiscence of times in the Berghain entrance parade grounds (‘Tinchel 316L’), or on a riposte to homophobic neighbours (‘Waiting for the Silence’), to a Phil Minton-esque ode to the cult queer street fair on ‘Folsom Query’, and his eventual coming to terms with the actions of a capricious partner on the album’s spirit-gnawing title tune.
Ultimately, it’s a testament to 20 years rubbing with and against the grain, subverting conventions and having a mucky laugh doing so. And we’re bang up for it.
![Old Trx [87-93]](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/delivery.midheaven.com/o/142296/images/5060165486045_main.jpg)
