Birds with Vertigo by Cumsleg Borenail and Sammy J Matthews

An increasingly digital life encourages a decreasingly corporeal identity, as every moment spent expressing ourselves online wedges distance between our minds and the flesh we inhabit. Mounting bodily anxiety inspires the experimental music of Birds with Vertigo, a record that combines the eccentric poetry of Sammy J Matthews and the highly original electronic music of Cumsleg Borenail. Taking heavy inspiration from body horror, Matthews’ poetry follows up every emotion with a gruesome display of bodily destruction, wrenching the conversation back to the body with metaphors and double entendres whenever the temptation arises to escape. In the hands of Borenail, these poems adopt a threatening, lumbering cadence conducive to their grotesque imagery, with slowed, deepened vocals framed by dramatic mist of uncanny, wordless vocal samples and haunting, reverb-heavy synths. Whenever our bodies limit us or cause us harm, the internet expands to fill the ensuing void, giving us license to demonize our bodies in a way only represented by the cartoonish slasher brutality of Birds with Vertigo.