Exterior is the artist moniker of Edinburgh producer Doug MacDonald. The artistic mission is to bring together the formally disparate worlds of electronic club sonics with elements of live instrumentation. Exterior’s pathway coalesced from years spent performing in bands and nights spent on dancefloors. Guitar feedback and live drum eruptions provide a textural abrasion and a haunted, humane groove currently absent in much UK dance. Admittedly, the latter’s unshakable syncopation and melodic pressure inform the method of the former. The two approaches are synthesised most noticeably in live performance. The combination is now made manifest in Exerior’s debut album ‘UMBILICAL DIGITAL’.

The record is a playful, irreverent, propulsive long-player, underpinned by the emergent global latticework of connectedness. UMBILICAL DIGITAL is an admission of the level of dependencies in contemporary music(s). This comes most noticeably in Fugazi-on-dancehall moment ORTHODOX DREAMS, footwork and math-rock mashing oddity TYRANNY OF CHOICE, or ritalin-addled robo-disco workout POPULIST. That the record is only eight tracks long and combines as many elements as it does, reflects Exterior’s artistic ambition in the process. The bedrock allowing this confidence has been road-testing the material live in Edinburgh venues, most overtly at local electronic institution Bongo Club. UMBILICAL DIGITAL is released via Edinburgh label Hobbes Music on vinyl and download. It features artwork by Exterior’s live visual artist collaborator, Panos Baras.

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