Bruce - four more than four - Poorly Knit
To get a better understanding of Bruce’s new release, it’s worth taking a closer look at his previous discography.
Larry McCarthy’s alter ego Bruce entered the stage in 2014 with releases on two of Britain’s contemporary club music institutions: Livity Sound’s Dnuos Ytivil and Hessle Audio. Since then, he made a name for himself with his signature sound aesthetics between breakout point testing club bangers (I’m Alright Mate or What) and delicate, touching, electronic lullabies (Summers Gotta End Sometime or Before You Sleep), again on labels Livity Sound, Hessle Audio, but also on Hemlock, Idle Hands or his good friend Batu’s imprint Timedance.
Beginning in 2022, he gave club music a break to then instead get on stage to perform live (En Masse Festival, Draaimolen Festival, or De School to name a few), all of which released as a fourteen-track tape on Timedance at the end of 2023. In addition to his well-crafted productions and knowledge of all kinds of dance music, with Not Ready For Love he also enters Avant-Pop territory – as usual with the range from dramatic high-energy anthems (Dappled Light) to subtle and tender songs (Flakes).
This album marks a turning point in his productions. Afterwards he only released one, quiet Bristolian dubby and industrial-leaning 7”, featuring vocalist ErisFM The Fool In Reverse / Red on Significant Other’s Pain Management, before he kicked off his own label project Poorly Knit in 2025. The labels narrative is his renunciation of the rise of entertaining, sound design-focused dance music in recent years.
“I wanna basically move away from the increasingly tiring sense of need for control which was happening more and more in sound design, and I feel like I want to bring in real physical world elements into the music and let that do the talking, and work around that.”
From his perspective, making sound design the centerpiece of his work creates a lack of connection to the tangible world and real emotions:
As you can tell from his previous releases, emotions play a crucial role in McCarthy’s music. He does not only express his own in music, but also wants them to be received and used for moments of catharsis on dance floors:
“I wanted to kind of step out of the lane entirely and wanted to make very human, very scary sounds.”
“I don’t necessarily agree that a dance floor should be somewhere for escapism and release and safety. I think it should be somewhere where we can exercise these feelings (fear, anger), and I want to kind of bring that tense expression onto dance floors.”
Following this approach, his choice to translate the four elements into music on the first four PORK releases makes total sense. four more than four rounds off this little series in typical style:
After taking a closer look at air (The Price / Mimicry), fire (Belly / Burned Alive), and water (The Hand), four more than four contains earth-related sample work and four remixes of previous tunes from the series.
It Ain’t Over Till… is one long crescendo, a wonderful example of Bruce’s sense of creating and playing with dynamics as well as the dramatic, and makes it the perfect choice to dive into this release. A tender, female herding call sample is the centerpiece. While it stands alone as the intro of the track, several delays build up layers over time. Straight up-tempo kickdrums are used, but they are uniquely introduced by the patient opening of a high-pass filter to drag the listener slowly from the high hills of a cow herder and back onto the dancefloor. These are then joined by refined hats and other flourishing percussive elements to confirm the listener’s suspicion that this really is a dance track. Long, droning chords drift in and all elements swell to a climactic drop, but are not unleashed. This seems to be in the next cut, Wesley’s Sniped All Our Bleedin’ K (Re-Vamped), which is very different to the previous atmosphere and is true to its name. It includes a slow, organic, industrial-spiced drum groove, massively distorted guitar riffs, and a pitched-down vocal sample, all of which create an image of welcoming the listener to some sort of chamber of horrors or Quentin Tarantino’s “Titty Twister”. Rockfall’s title says it all – earth-shattering drums, warning shouts and dramatic strings evoke a catastrophic scenario. You Were Right seems to close this chapter of productions. Sublime, stretched and moving chords, coupled with a Breakbeat, build the foundation on which a pitch-shifting, ECG-sounding element constantly switches from consonance to dissonance. A euphoric but not at all cheesy ten-minute final installment.
Vancouver-based dj_2button transforms The Hand into a psychedelic, warm but also trippy as hell Tech House jam. The siren’s call as well as the hallucinatory, flickering sounds keep you on the dance floor for thirteen minutes. Re:lax co-founder and Timedance family member re:ni took care of Golden Water Queen in just the way it suits her: re:ni’s sertraline queen mix places Bruce’s vocals in a new, polyrhythmic and soundsystem-affiliated light. The Prince boomkat mix by one of Bristol’s finest House geeks fka Boursin turns the brilliantly silly 170bpm stomper into a deep, raw and patiently crafted House groover for early and late nights. Hemlock boss and one of the UK’s living dance music legends Untold delivers the final installment with his Mirabelle Mix of Dham’s Jam. The distinctive groove and Dham’s vocal chops from the original track are shrouded by a constantly swirling, billowing bassline and an arpeggiating synth that take Dham’s Jam to an even darker, spaced-out world.
You can clearly identify the cuts as McCarthy’s work: playful dynamics, abrasive sounds and arrangements full of twists and turns. Beyond that, it’s great to see how he enters new terrain again, using his honed signature sound to pioneer new approaches to his artistry.
While this opening chapter for Poorly Knit closes the loop, it paves the way for what’s to come. The anticipation is palpable, wouldn't you agree?
