Churches Schools & Guns CD

Whether or not Berlin-based Italian Luca Montellaro's sophomore album, Churches Schools & Guns is a concept album (we have no idea, to be honest), there's a definite connection between the evocative, uneasy title and the clastrophobic, paranoid music contained within. "The Horror", a decidedly unsettling foray into nightmarish ambience, sets the tone. The maudlin but strangely involving music which follows shuffles between ethereal, post-dubstep tech-scapes ("The Self as Another", "Human Triage"), druggy hypnotism ("Follow the Leader"), sludgy downtempo oddness ("Catch 22") and tumbling, monastic ambience ("Falling"). Throughout, there's an uneasy sense of a bleak, other-wordly story unfolding.