Electronic music and urban spaces go hand in hand. It’s beneath underpasses, within abandoned warehouses, and across East London estates that electronic music finds its most visceral expression. Torn Relics understand this alchemy intimately, crafting sounds that capture not just the sonic landscape of contemporary urban existence, but its psychological topography as well. This is the territory inhabited on Bleeding in Colour, their third full-length offering that positions them as architects of a uniquely British form of sonic brutalism.
Torn Relics are the London-based duo of Aimée Mullen and Romek Boyer (aka Rommek), a married couple who’ve transmuted their shared musical obsessions into something decidedly otherworldly. Mullen, classically trained in Irish traditional music and violin, brings folkloric sensibilities that Boyer warps through his arsenal of electronics, creating what they term “cyber-punk electronics” merged with “tribalistic rhythms,” though such descriptions barely scratch the surface in this relationship of sonic voyeurism.
Following their 2019 Poisoned Chalice EP on Sacred Court (which featured a remix by SNTS), the duo released Abolish The Dogma on Leyla Records in 2020 and Burning Injustice via Instrument Of Discipline in 2021. Each release has seen them refining their fusion of cinematic soundscapes and ethereal vocals, building a reputation for enigmatic live performances that have scorched venues from Berlin to Athens.
Beyond their own output, the pair have established themselves as curators of London’s experimental underground through their ARCANE event series at Hackney’s The Glove That Fits. Their bookings – Samuel Kerridge, Broken English Club, Andrea Parker, Iron Sight, Cardinal & Nun, Eraldo Bernocchi, Ireen Amnes – reveal an aesthetic that prizes tension, texture, and the dissolution of genre boundaries.
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Bleeding in Colour opens with ‘Through The Veil’, its rhythmic pulse underpinned by Mullen’s layered, howling vocals that shift from inaudible whispers to haunting chants. It’s a statement of intent: this is music for devotees of the Poland-turned-international Unsound festival, for those who find beauty in Ben Frost‘s ice-cathedral compositions and the tech-noise maximalism that defines the bombastic contemporaries of sound art’s bleeding edge.
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The album operates in a space of constant tension between deconstruction and propulsion. ‘Corpse Flower’ strips things back to echoed percussion that sounds like pipes banging in an East London underpass; the kind of track that threatens to explode in live settings but maintains an eerie restraint on record. There’s something ineffably “London” about these sounds; Boyer’s techno leanings channel the character of estate parties and warehouse raves, while Mullen’s contributions ground them in something more ancient, more visceral. It’s a sonic reflection of the city’s own temporal layering where millennia-old artefacts in world-renowned museums coexist with the immediate pulse of contemporary club culture.
‘Mask of Monarchy’ brings techno aggression to the fore, its club-ready beat paired with Mullen’s punk-inflected vocals. The looping synth riffs and repeated refrains make it one of the album’s most immediate moments, before ‘Preveli Palms’ pulls back into more reserved territory. This push-and-pull dynamic defines the record’s architecture, never allowing listeners to settle into complacency.
The collaboration with Necro Deathmort on ‘Porcelain Dreams’ adds fuller production that recalls classic trip-hop filtered through a present-day lens, evoking the more beat-driven experiments from Aphex Twin‘s 1990s EPs while maintaining the duo’s signature darkness. It’s followed by ‘Double Standards’, perhaps the album’s most politically charged moment. “As the rich get richer…” Boyer taunts with a delivery that channels Sleaford Mods‘ caustic social commentary over techno foundations. The track builds progressively, each repeated vocal line cutting deeper than the last.
The title track introduces guitar into the sonic maelstrom, with its accompanying video clip carrying visuals of breathtaking mountainous landscapes that momentarily transport the duo away from their urban context. It’s a rare moment of geographical expansion on a record that otherwise feels inextricably linked to London’s concrete and steel. The album closes with ‘Under The Rubble, There is Hope’ – a title that could serve as a manifesto for the entire project.
Throughout, Torn Relics navigate themes of abandonment and resistance, creating music that exists between reality and hallucination. The drone elements – whether through electronics, strings, or vocals -anchor even the most chaotic moments, while segments of world music with electronic flair prevent the album from becoming too insular. It’s the sound of early industrial music‘s liberation ethos filtered through contemporary post-punk electronics, but with a commitment to sonic exploration that feels entirely their own.
Torn Relics have crafted an album that feels both ancient and futuristic, local and universal, beautiful and abrasive. The synthesis between Mullen’s traditional training and Boyer’s electronic experimentation coalesce naturally, creating a third space where bodhrán rhythms can coexist with modular synthesis, where Irish folk melodies can be processed into something resembling transmissions from a dystopian future.
This is music for those who find transcendence in volume, who understand that repetition can be a form of resistance, and who recognise that the most vital art often emerges from the margins. Bleeding in Colour doesn’t just straddle the line between electronica and experimental music, it obliterates it entirely.
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