There’s an electricity to the evolving sound of test plan that’s hard to pin down, part registering like danger, part like exhilaration. The London dance-punk trio’s latest single, Gone, carries its energy into something magnetic.
The new song begins with a tense, minimalist pulse; wiry guitars, a throbbing bass, piston-like and metallic, drums snapping with precision. The control doesn’t last though. Everything unravels with one sound tearing into the next, until it all explodes into a maelstrom of noise and emotion.
The music video pushes matches the music's intensity and becomes an inseparable part of the release. Directed by test plan's Max Mason, it plays out like a nightmare where performance art meets ritual. Mason drenches himself in paint, thrashing against blank walls until he and the space dissolve into one texture. As he turns his body into a living artwork, an impression of Olivier de Sagazan’s work is naturally recalled.
Bassist Rory Dickinson slices through fruit with focus, the imagery nodding to Irving Penn’s lush but uncanny still life photography, and guitarist Michallis Fragkiadakis drifts through a blizzard of books, chasing understanding as they tumble around him, a nod to Sergei Parajanov’s cinema.
Gone was produced by Darren Jones (Fat Dog, Gorillaz) at Livingstone Studios.
ZR