Single Review: Amanda's Scanner - "The Ball / The Wash"

Amanda's Scanner - The Ball / The Wash

(Self-Released 2016)

The dentist's excavator leaves a shard of molar jutting into the bottom of your tongue. An eyelash worms its way beneath your lower lid. Amanda's Scanner's debut single is a work of subtle body horror, of minor irritation, the feeling that something is out of place. Riffs and rhythms tangle like a mass of industrial limbs, bruised bits of Blank Dogs guitar wrapped around ossified post-punk drum machines. It's one-third Sonic Youth, one third Cabaret Voltaire and another third cyberpunk.

A-side "The Ball" is an oddly calming inundation of static, bathing echoey spoken-word vocals in treble-laden shoegaze fuzz - it is to hardcore what Aphex Twin's "Flim" is to DnB: spartan, deconstructive and beautifully minimal. "The Wash" veers into more aggressive territory on the digital flipside, channeling the glitched-out assault of early Crystal Castles. "The Ball / The Wash" is one of the year's more leftfield, forward-thinking punk singles, but it's no less mosh-able than any Minor Threat 7" - put on your thinking cap and jump in the post-internet pit.