Tide Turner

Sclews (Sam Clews) is a Sheffield-based visual and music artist. A prolific purveyor of electronic goodness since 2018, Sclews has recently been making waves with ultra-high-energy performances at Sheffield’s No Bounds festival, AMAZE festival, and Manchester’s The White Hotel, as well as many appearances at Interworld and Algorave/Pattern Club festivals. These live sets see him frantically working FLStudio like it’s a real-time strategy game, tweaking VST parameters and throwing homemade stem/noise loops in and out of the mix to create spontaneous and ever-changing flurries of sound via inventory management techniques.

Following an appearance on the Energetics compilation, ‘Tide Turner’ marks Sclews’ second appearance on Interworld Media but also his first full-length release. Named after an obscure community-created weapon in Team Fortress 2, the music immediately jumps on you with his distinctive blend of hyper-frantic beats, high-definition blasts of alien noise, and trance-like synths.

The fragile melodies of tracks like ‘Comfig’, ‘Meloe’ and ‘Escape From Stalker Lee’ glint through the chaos and anchor the proceedings. Elsewhere, ‘Caber’ thumps insistently with catchy bursts of TV-static noise, never losing its groove. While the slippery ‘Scrimblo’ jumps from a pulsing electro beat through a series of bizarre refractions, before dismantling itself entirely. Across nine tracks and clocking in at thirteen-and-a-half minutes, ‘Tide Turner’ wastes no time with filler and manages to examine multiple worlds within its own self-imposed logic and sound palette, much like Sclews’ drawings, appearing here as the album’s cover art – mirroring the density of the music with its intricate details.

Releases 15th February with limited edition set of prints and stickers – stay tuned for details!

Music and artwork: Sclews
Mastered by Phoneutrian