Fox Trot is a new project by Peter Keating (aka Fox Trot) a prolific and somewhat cryptic figure who happens to be based in Birmingham. Fox Trot’s initial claim to fame was as the drummer in South London’s Deepchord studio – the acoustically manipulated tom tom tom he adjusted so that his notes would echo back into the space behind the keyboard. He then insisted on being heard in the rehearsal rooms, having set up his own recording space in his own self-built studio. This has led to him getting himself into trouble before, notably as the drummer in Matt Wales’s cover of Lord Jammys’s “I Felt Like A Pig”.

He’s also a prolific tweeter, and likes to complain about his critics, about “the fucking cunt” coming after him, about how a “racist pig” stole his “unique voice”, about being called a “cunt” on the phone and about being called a “bitch, bitch” on the internet, among other things.

Fox Trot has always been about something, whether it’s the vocals of “Ta-Nehisi Coates” or the multi-instrumental drum machines of “Once In A Lifetime”, and this is no different. There’s a bit more of a heart here, a hint of the mysterious, the dangerous undercurrent in his music. “All This […]” is a melodica sound, a haunting ballad. It seems to be a kind of meditation on mortality and the afterlife, death and the spirits of the dead, on the paradoxical beauty of life and the terrible beauty of the dead. It’s the sound of an artist who knows that his work is only as good as the audience, who knows that his audience doesn’t really care about his life. He’s doing his best to live up to the expectations of the audience.

And it’s engaging. The opening half hour is darkly beautiful, a trap-like rhythm playing around the edges of the clock and stuttering, then fades out. “And I’ll take my shirt off and show you what I’ve got” builds tension through a barrage of guttural sounds, and the clock slows to a crawl. “I’m on my deathbed, and I’m hiding behind my computer”, he mutters in an accent that sounds like he’s been delivering a sermon. A quiet piano rolls over the surface noise of his speech, but it’s never a sermon, instead a slow motion electronic trap.

The second half of the disc burns with fire, with eerie stabs of bass, a single note drum machine rattle, even a faint, flickering siren. Its darkness makes the third act of the album, and the final moments of “(And I’m hiding behind my computer)” as a kind of catharsis. After the tension and the violence, the melodies breathe, and the moments of quietness are filled with quiet beauty.