Having finally read Jack Mannix’s Cocksucker Bruise ‘zine this week (themes from which he discusses in this great interview), the promise of a collaboration with Horse Macgyver suddenly makes a lot of sense, to the extent that I wonder “why not earlier?” The sounds here are a lot more bracing than the Circle Pit member’s other currently-gigging group Drown Under, but that impression probably derives from this sounding different to anything else happening at the moment.

The collaboration makes sense because there’s a hidden sordid quality in Macgyver’s material, a quality that tears a small hole into an underbelly you’d otherwise dare not peak into. Mannix’s approach in Cocksucker Bruise offers a similar vantage point, but you’re basically getting more (a lot more) of it, and with no sleight-of-hand writerly artifice. Mannix writes the way he sings: unfussy and wretchedly deadpan.

It may be that I’m still recovering from reading the ‘zine, but this collision of Macgyver’s barely cogent menace with Mannix’s ruthless grit makes a helluva lot of sense. It’s enriching. It’s like a semblance colliding with a lived reality. I hope this collaboration continues.