boycalledcrow's 'the sprawl' Is a Beautifully Haunted Masterpiece of Tape and Bass Weight
Carl M. Knott has spent several records under the boycalledcrow name building something warm out of folk instruments and tape. the sprawl is the one where he puts most of that down. What replaces it is denser, lower and considerably stranger, and it is the best thing he has made.
Out on Mortality Tables — a micro-label in the truest sense — the record braids two preoccupations that have no business fitting together: declassified material about unexplained phenomena, and the death of Knott’s grandmother during the making of it. Backseat Mafia’s John Parry scored it 89 out of 100 and described it as “restless folktronica which goes darker and deeper,” which is accurate about both the sound and the subject.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Dub basslines, and they are doing the emotional work. Where earlier boycalledcrow records let acoustic texture carry the mood, here the bottom end arrives with weight and delay and simply sits on the track until you feel it. “zephyr” and “dreamwave” are where that shift is clearest.
The Spatial Dynamics: Reverse tape loops, cut-ups, abrupt tangents. Parry’s reference points — DJ Shadow, John Carpenter soundtracks, Durutti Column — cover the geography well: crate-dug rhythm, synthesizer dread, and guitar that shimmers rather than strums. Fragments of guitar surface out of the distortion and vanish again, which is exactly the right gesture for a record about signals you can’t quite confirm.
Standout Performance
Knott, alone, as arranger. Layered synth orchestrations over drum-driven arrangements is an easy thing to describe and a hard thing to keep legible; he keeps it legible for twelve tracks.
Why It’s Certified
⚡ “temple,” “godhead” and the title track are the three Parry singles out, and they make a strong case on their own — but “brittle bones” and “dead leaves” are where the grief lives, and they are why the record holds.
🌈 Twelve titles — “bone eater,” “angle,” “mantis man,” “atlas,” “orb” — that read like a list of things glimpsed at the edge of a field at night.
⚡ Parry’s closing line is the right one to steal: “boycalledcrow’s new imaginings create other dimensions which you need to explore.”