Dis Fig's What To Make Of These Mortal Hands is a cinematic work of extremes

What To Make Of These Mortal Hands – her first solo album since 2019, following collaborations with The Bug and The Body – expresses itself vehemently as a confrontation between humanity’s capacity for beauty and destruction. It's seemingly constructed to document collapse, but tries to find tenderness within the wreckage. From the opening notes and subsonic frequencies of “Arrival” and the rapped dream preachings of South London's Eldon Somers (aka The wind between) who features on “The Account”, there’s an immediate sense of apprehension, lending the album a theatrical dimension, framing its explorations of cruelty and self-deception. Plucked strings and mechanical clatter blend into industrial electronics on “Psaltery” further establishing the album’s peculiar grammar. It's like listening to an ancient ritual conducted inside a malfunctioning machine; Chen’s voice hovers at the edge of audibility throughout, right before pounding rhythms and distorted shrieks rupture the mood. What follows is a cinematic work of extremes, from tender and terrifying, switching up from track to track. “Vorago” is a descent into the depths accompanied by groaning strings, boiling into enormous, mol...