An expanded CD reissue of Black Rain's »Obliteration Bliss«, originally released on cassette via Downwards in 2023.

Degraded, faded cities now empty of people. You can hear household appliances in the kitchens still talking, but only to each other.

The phrases are distorted, unclear; broken English, Japanese and a few Korean and Chinese automated voices, syllables, shopping lists, play lists for dinner and recipes.

Somewhere one of the machines is dialled in on an isolated pre Buddhist monk chant, distant like from a high cliff meditation cell. The flow of the wide, long Black Mother River Kali Gandaki below them.

Here is Obliteration Bliss A world in a flash of light. The world running faster and faster. Another biomorph escapes the facility...she disappears into a backwater jungle town. A witness to smoking remains and death after generation wars, ash snow dusted, scorched lands. Look into a huge room filled with ancient machines and stumble among the fossils by the old silver river. Before the wind reverses and chokes us with sand, grit and who knows what else direct from the Subcontinent. The evening fog closes around impossibly high tower buildings. A pack of racing bikes approaching , lights flaring. Still we linger in-between the shadows and the light. There’s another voice calling, but its form is hazed in fading neon. It’s raining again.

• Stuart Argabright