Regular readers and similarly inclined music heads may remember my review of Killing Joke drummer Big Paul Ferguson’s debut EP, Remote Viewing, here in the summer of 2018, it being a bracing first solo outing that scored the tumult of the times to a disquieting tee. Of course, life as we all know it has only become seismically more complicated than those comparatively balmy, care-free days, and — as if on cue — Ferguson has delivered his first full album of music largely to address same, but also to satiate his ever-present compulsion to take the world to task. That album is Virtual Control, and like the opening salvo that was Remote Viewing, one shouldn’t expect it to go down easy.
Again flanked by guitarist/co-producer Mark “Gemini” Thwaite (storied string-bender for everyone from Tricky and Peter Murphy through The Wonder Stuff and The Mission), Ferguson resumes his withering and world-weary renunciation of the avaricious, the fatuously deceptive and irretrievably complacent, all set to a thwomping, burly backdrop of the drummer’s signature beats and Thwaite’s crackling guitars. These songs are rich with depth and expanse, probably best exemplified on tracks like “The Unraveling,” “Sea of Judgement,” “Lapdogs" and “Extrapolate.”
While Ferguson has stayed true to the trajectory forged on the first EP, that being a canny welding of disparate styles to frame his deliberate, concise and targeted lyrics, there is indeed a fundamental evolution to Virtual Control, that being the man’s own vocals. Considering the thundering sound Ferguson has cultivated that is singularly his own — both here and over the course of his wide body of work with Killing Joke — his voice remains one of the more nuanced elements of his arsenal. But where Remote Viewing found him reciting his verses almost like emphatic incantations, Big Paul Ferguson actually sings here. And while, again, he may lack the hellfire-blackened bombast of his old foil Jaz Coleman, Fegurson’s melodic crooning here helps add some new focus and personality to the overall project. This is the sound of an artist branching out, experimenting and pushing proceedings forward.
There is so much going on in this bristling, layered record that deserves your full attention. Give in to it.
Get it here, or on fetching red vinyl.
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