Toronto-based musician Bob McCully has been active in various forms for 15 years. He began as Women in Tragedy, taking on a significant role in his city’s noise underground. He pumped out an endless stream of CD-Rs and cassettes, through which he matured his sound from lengthy noise-drone explorations to song forms that were tinged with elements of metal and shoegaze. He dabbled in electronic dance forms, but it wasn’t until adopting the Wizard Of moniker that McCully truly embraced the beat.
As Wizard Of, McCully has dialed back his prolific nature, taking a more measured approach to his output. Quantity has been overshadowed by quality. The one constant in McCully’s music is a darkness, a sinister vein that continues to run through each track. Devour, his latest, isn’t blatantly rooted in horror, but there’s a chilling subtext that lurks just beneath the surface of every track.
The EP opens up with the title track, which transmogrifies from a hypnotic pulse train into a seriously overdriven banger of a piece. A syncopated snare shuffle leads to a piano outro that jump cuts into “Knife”. Here’s a piece that mirrors horror-esque themes against hardcore beats, to great effect. McCully heads to UK garage territory with “Demon Life”, which seems to pick up where “Knife” left off, albeit in a more energetic mode. “Fingers Through Light” seems to bring out the producer’s jazzier side, being riddled with what sounds like trombone stabs that pull together into a melody. McCully once again brings on the darkness to close out the proceedings with “Gold Blur”, an enigmatic piece that is worthy of repeat listens.
Devour is available digitally via his Bandcamp, so shuffle your way over there and lay down a few bucks for this stellar collection of shadowy beats.
