Hecate (pronounced 'Heck-a-tee'), you will remember, was the mythological chief witch whom all the scary villagers were covertly worshiping in the pilot episode of ill-fated Dr. Who spinoff "K9 And Company" (circa 1981). Her angels, by contrast, are Pietra Wexstun (whose work has bedecked various Stan Ridgway and Drywall records) and her band of reprobates.
Hidden Persuader is a stylish box of delights - whisky smooth and air conditioning cool. It's a mix of ambient, crypto-creepy soundscapes and a few songs thrown in, too. The instrumentals come largely from the audio accompaniments to installations with titles like "Visualdelia" and "Nice Ladies In Cages," so you probably know what we're talking here. The whole affair is saturated with self-awareness and delicious decadence.
The songs themselves are largely groove driven, the lyrics mantra-locked, adding to the hypnotic air of it all. Thus, the title counsels "surrender, don't submit" again and again until we oblige. The electro-jazz of "Eve's Angle" offers an amusing take on dogged persistence: "Where there's a document shred/ make sure that it's one that I've read/ or I'll be back with the tape and the glue..." The song itself chugs on insistently, finger-clicking good. It's here as elsewhere that Wexstun recalls various ethereal goddesses - early Anna Domino, any period Kendra Smith, Propaganda, Lida Husik...
Despite the electronic fashioning going on here, some tracks acquire a distinctly Eastern tone which lends further dimensions. "Hall Of Mirrors" is a Turkish delight, steamy and clammy and a deliberately unfocused angle which could sum up the albums particular world-view: "Walls liquefying, boundaries are dying." "Purdah Party" (one of the installation pieces) revels in Aubrey Beardsley decadence - is the yapping that of the chattering classes or slavering hounds? Both, probably. It's a sinister turn-of-the-century costume ball that could come from "The Company Of Wolves." In fact, the instrumentals build to a "collect-the-set!" tour of disquieting yet unspecified places. A doctor is repeatedly paged on the clockwork-driven "Comatose Dose," the violent white walls of the sterilized hospital shimmer into view, death permeates the air. "Rosemary's Baby" offers us a discomfiting nursery, wailing infants bemoaning their worlds. "Somnium Waltz" sees us dance off regally into the night as nightmares meld into daymares.
"Hidden Persuader" is never disturbing, or even particularly challenging, but as ambient electronics go it's as funky as it is freaky.
