Under the needle

Dark Matter Editor Faye Coulman talks us through the soundtrack to her escape from commuting hell... It’s precisely 7.48am and as I stand on board a crammed tube train wending its rickety, cloyingly humid way toward the seething inner circle of commuter hell that is Oxford Circus, I can already feel a troubling intermingling of claustrophobia and simmering agitation bubbling up inside of me. On its exit from the next station, the train lurches violently into motion, throwing

Fire. It’s hard not to stop and be humbled by this lethal, all-consuming element. A violent and unpredictable spark that ignited into being existence as we know it, fuels and sustains life and, by the very same token, can savagely obliterate whole ecosystems and empires in the blink of an eye. Once it gets going, nothing can rival, halt or hope to defeat it. And from blistering, darkly abrasive grooves that audibly crackle with adrenaline to a fiercely relentless work ethic a

'The Modern Art of Setting Ablaze' opens with the stark but beautiful track 'The Knowing' which sounds like it has been lifted straight from a horror movie soundtrack, so when the next track 'Age of the Absurd' comes on, the change of pace is a little shocking but a good one at that. 'Age...' really optimises what Mantar are: hardcore enough for punks but equally dark enough for the metalheads too. They effortlessly blend different elements together to make something that is