Torino’s SabaSaba return with Unknown City, a bleakly evocative invocation of a future defined by social segregation, the othering of the marginalised, and the siren call of authoritarianism.

Whereas the band’s 2018 self-titled debut drew on the works of JG Ballard and William Gibson, Unknown City is a sonic interpretation of China Miéville’s 2009 novel, The City And The City.  The story is set in a post-Soviet Balkans state, which sees two cities, Bezel and Ul Quoma, occupy the same place while being seen as entirely separate by their respective citizens.  This is not a physical border, but rather one born of perception and custom.

Inhabitants are effectively trained to ignore one another, to knowingly ‘unsee’.  The band’s homage lends new force to the novel’s central themes of how people are conditioned to ignore that which does not directly impact us and to dissociate from harm being done in our name, which frequently makes us complicit in the socio-economic inequalities that define our society.

The duo skilfully conjure a remorselessly suffocating landscape as they lead us into this dystopian realm, a tale of both refusing to see and of being unseen.  The album slowly uncoils, relentlessly building impetus before once again folding in on itself, a constant process of assembly and disassembly on a hazy, uncertain journey.  Hauntingly monochrome synthesisers and programmed drums form the bedrock, over which eerily disembodied voices, spectral chants, and scratchy analogue instrumentation flare.  Central to the darkly disorientating atmosphere that evolves is the mournful yet strident viola of Ambra Chiara Michelangeli that is deftly woven through the album.

Stand out moments include the viola propelled Desert Cathedral, the infectiously discordant Night Plotters, and the utterly entrancing Wrists Free, featuring industrial techno duo Jerome.  As the album reveals itself, you can’t help but envisage yourself in the smog-filled, intensely surveilled streets of a city inherently at unease with itself, unwilling to look itself in the eye, burdened as much by its history as by its ambiguous future.