To hear the titular track of Mosa‘s ‘I Sold You And You Sold Me’ is to hear a slow clashing of genres. Softly industrialised whispers of synth, a warm building burn in hard colours of ash, stylised Fuck Buttons and Blanc Mass thumped drums… it’s a wound down eruption of volcanic colours that moves with an old western gothica swoon.

The scope of the piece is enduring. As it lilts and expands and contracts in its heat, as it strips down to bare sounds and builds, never once does it lose it’s lush textures. Thickened strings match the punch of the jugular pulse, icy glitches and glass dance with rich wails of synth, and a vocal that’s ground to its least audible rasp seems to snake through the base of the track. 

 Through the measured collisions and the swirling of noise, we can pick out the pieces of splintered electro, prick at the crisp flecks of abstract percussion, or wade through its ultra HD widescreen violence. Remember when Unkle made music that threatened? It’s a dense swathe that glows like an ember.

From here we diverge into split destinations. As the parts that combined for that opening blast get extracted, stretched out and distilled, the next tracks take surprising directions.

 ‘Foaming At The Mouth’ is retro sub-goth pop where the threat gets reduced to regret. Between slick produced snares and half decayed clicks, we move slow as we slide to a smooth 80s grove. The vocals that rasped with their sly paranoia are replaced with a reverb soaked croon. And the panic and rush of that opening piece, with its thrill and eruptive expanse? It feels like a lost and still fracturing landscape that’s cracking up just out of earshot. We might think it was needed, this breakdown and pause, but I say we could take one hit more.

‘Matter in motion’ is a scatter of sounds among vibrating strings that should haunt us. Mournful and waning, and twisting in turn, we return to those thump heavy drums. Those whispering rattles, that play with percussion and switching of textures, it’s all here but in threads that don’t tangle… it’s wiry and just shy of rough.

When we tie up these two final tracks and their tastes, and we re-wrap their splinters and shards, we find all the parts that made that first song sing with its thick-set and filmic aggression. Almost everything after comes second. But that first track is un-dulled and ripe for repeat, and it stays on my playlist for keeps.

‘I Sold You And You Sold Me’ is out now to download and stream.

Find this track and others from Rats On The Run featured artists right here on ROTR Radio.