Human Heads are an electro-pop sprechgesang duo from Glasgow.

Human Heads deliver a whopping sensory twofer; a vial of fragrant oil for your proboscis and six doses of throbbing-synth-extrusions and poetry-speak-sung for your inky flappers. On listening, it’s the overall heaviness what mugs you first – narrative and synthetic. ‘You shouldn’t have met’ is a slice of crafty street recording, school kids on the blab rapping on death, that’s soon dive-bombing deeply like Sabbath picked up a couple of Korg SB-100’s rather than them dirty guitars.

As the tracks unspool we follow stories (possibly reflections, possibly prophecies) on the full-body foxtrot and crucifixion. Pixelated piano is preceded by the delighted squeaking of a small child, a train’s rhythmic rattle and Scott Joplin’s entertaining hands. R.D. Laing is in a nostalgic mood so things end with the sort of dry-rot clunk Kanye would have chipped a tooth for on his self-titled Yeezus opus.

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Ben Ellul-Knight
Hannah Ellul

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They reverberate,
they also absorb dregs
that came from our teenage diversions
Cold and stony, the rubbery shadow
Brought to life
With a whiff of a dank man-made hole
And now a brightness
Feels higher and more determined
Fuller now, gathering to block out extraneous letters, sights
My own fingers trawling and trailing
lips overstretched
Rid the flavours from the mouth
A narrative fading - good
Metallic churning // reaching out,
receding again and overlaid with a negative etching
Trying
A breathing cog
Not circular but returning
// familiar but not mine
a sweet spot between nape, pit, popper, pear //
Trying
A breathing cog
Not circular but returning
Do it with your eyes closed
For
A sweet spot between now, then, the rear of a dream
Trapped Doppler,
Metal is cooling, becomes corky
Lips overstretched, adjective snatched
Sucked and blown
To reach equilibrium //
Thinly domestic now
A drawn out teeter I can no longer perceive
But it came from somewhere massive and hard
A slow shock
// A pattern cut from a metal sheet
and now it’s on the move
lays itself down over spoken undulations
until they form a new pattern, called a beat //
received, pressing, driving,
old and flammable
sneaked up from within a refrigerated box
another slow, pleasant shock
Thickly domestic now as we sink
Survey the scatter
Manipulate the joint
Tiny and early, the echo ate its tail

Rebecca Wilcox

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Fractal Meat Cuts, 2021