Trangendered artist famous for paintings for Psychic TV album releases and more recently for her self-released lo-fi albums, Val Denham collaborates with Black Sun Productions for this brooding and dank experimental electronic excursion. Beginning the album is a spoken word reading of Charles Dickens “A Tale of Two Cities” with a Coil-esque backdrop drone. No surprise on the Coil reference as Massimo and Pierce have their tight ties with Coil in the past. Sexual undertones perverse the soundtrack collapsing words into a separate entity that is both instrument and vision all at once. Industrialized rhythms dominate some of the tracks while the druggy green visions of “Absinthe” portend their influence with cooled keyboards and manipulated loops.
Another dark industrial EBM and dance album by one of best up-and-comers this past decade has seen in this genre, Suicide Commando. “Implements of Hell” smashes your skull against hard concrete drum loops, techno acid synths, and distorted vocals that could only be heralded by people who have a sinister desire of the dark gothic underworld. The album populates each banging beat with gyrating club-friendly melodies that while harsh are still undeniably catchy. To date Suicide Commando had yet to release such a compelling stroke of genius that was across the board fantastic but “Implements of Hell” does just that and much more raising the bar for everyone else in a very dominated EBM genre.
Remixes of KMFDM’s latest album released in 2009, “Blitz”; “Krieg” is a body-crushing dance nightmare with some of scene’s bravest and best innovators tapped to revision the music into something distinct and even more intriguing than the original track. The album opens with a bang with Combichrist’s “All 4 One Mix” of “Bait & Switch”, sounding like a rave held at an abandoned east European factory. Then “Strut” is rerubbed by Andy Selway whose “Disco Balls” mix is dirty and reminds one of Lords of Acid. Seismologist offers up a darkened “Potz Blitz!” that bleeds old school industrial dance. Prong grabs their distortion pedals and pounds on your eardrums with their rendition of “Bait & Switch”. Skinny Puppy contributor and engineer Dave “Rave” Ogilvie brokers his take on “Never Say Never” with a mix that’s surprisingly very Yo Gabba Gabba with its sun-soaked synths and pleasant melodies. Other notable contributors are Komor Kommando, Assemblage 23, tweaker, Koichi Fukuda, and Vile Evils (Pop Will Eat Itself).
Frigid synthetic unmelodies collide with industrial-sized caustic noise and abrasive metal clanks and clicks forge the audible nightmare that is “Soul Cleansing”. Sektor 304 is industrial in the vein of early era Einsturzende Neubauten, Godflesh, and Clock DVA (Jeffrey Dahmer’s favorite band). Noise and apocalypse never sounded so uninviting and yet so seductive. Atmospheric blends of soundscapes with percussion that hammers away at your eardrums, tantalizing your soul. If Sektor 304 sounds like a nightmare factory that’s because it is – this assembly line is one that builds the robots of the future that take over Earth and obliterate Mankind.
Mark Spybey is one of the biggest geniuses in the post-industrial music scene. His 11th album under the Dead Voices on Air moniker is yet another giant leap forward for mankind’s adventures in sound. “Fast Falls the Eventide” is a meticulous carving out of aural inspirations dotted with spectral soundscapes, huge rhythms, and masterful experimentations. The 2nd disc is actually a re-release of the long out of print 1994 cassette-only release “Abrader” that was launched on Japanese label G.R.O.S.S. The second disc also features two previously unreleased tracks collaborating with cEvin Key (Skinny Puppy, Download, Doubting Thomas) with Key’s interesting melting of a moog synthesizer and banging on a barrel drum with Mark’s odd backdrop of noise and musical alliteration. Spybey’s music has long been a personal inspiration for me, whether it was his forays with Download, the atmospheric intrigue of :Zoviet France:, or his collaboration with Robin Storey (Rapoon) in his side project Reformed Faction. Ranging from caustic missionaries of mania to nightmarish dream soundtracks or sparsely woven ambient tapestries, Spybey always seems to hit on all cylinders. Catchy it is not, absolutely essential it for sure is. The main disc of the release is a lengthy node of winded and sweeping synthesizers, aural ambience, manipulated samples, and nested noise. Truly a caricature of perfected post-industrial compositions, “Fast Falls the Eventide” may very well be one of the most interesting releases of 2009.
I hear a lot of influence from earlier Frontline Assembly within Drifting in Silence’s brand of EBM and industrial dance and that’s a damn good thing. The title track and its three-included remixes makes this EP well worthy of a purchase. Monumental riffage, hard-edged beats, and sweeping synth overloads the senses making “Facewithin” a trademarked sound that no doubt will encourage a lot of repeat listens and copycats. To the copycats I have two words to say: “Good luck”.
Writing an album about a landscape in northern England doesn’t sound like a very interesting nor topical subject but when you listen and discover that this album written by a founding member of Zoviet France in Robin Storey is based around Britain’s wastelands that house their Cold War intercontinental ballistic missile sites, efforts for launching a Briton into space, and other top secret research facilities your ears percolate with the mysterious and doom. Rapoon’s “Dark Rivers” is riddled with murky cold watery synthetic dankness, gloomy superstitious and ominous tones that are as wild, uncontrollable, and remote as the region itself. Thumbs up big time.
The joy of listening to an album by Download is deciphering and breaking down each element to the complex sound collage that makes up each and every track. “Sorcear” is a perfect example, trolling about with an almost raunchy bassline and rhythm track, there’s exhausting bleeps, noises, and distorted sounds emanating from the speakers in a random yet controlled chaotic setting. “Zass Pie” continues with yawning voice samples that seem to whisper subversive hints into each ear only to be stood up tall with a military-esque kick drum and blasts of filtered rhythms. Over the years, cEvin Key (Skinny Puppy, pLateaU, Doubting Thomas, etc.) has honed his craft into an ambient textured orchestrated chaos with fittings of pure keyboard bliss, distorted and tangled sound effects, and mangled samples that reek of bong residue. Key over the years has easily been recognized as one of the most influential artists in the electronic circuit surpassing the likes of Autechre, Nine Inch Nails, and even the mighty Aphex Twin who now seem to follow his grace with rabid fascination. Twisted acidic breakbeats haunt many of the tracks with a renewed focus on dance rhythms that are broken, tossed into the air, only to rain down upon our ears. Each album that Download seems to pen casts aside previous futuristic sounds for a chaotic future of disco breaks that no one ever sees coming. Perhaps the most intriguing element of “FiXeR” is its uncanny ability to connect with the listener on so many different planes of existence–I could easily sit still and absorb each tune, as well as get up and attempt to dance, or leave it as background music while reading; but it really gets its vibe off proper when the listener allows each cast-off melody, every broken beat, and all singularly textured and heavily effected soundwave wash over him or her seeming to will a mirror of the listener’s soul and thought patterns out in a playful way. Astonishing and perhaps one of the best all-time electronic albums.
Phil Western and Mark Spybey met in the Canuckistani capitol of Vancouver, Ontario while performing with Download, a band that featured ex-Skinny Puppy members (at the time) cEvin Key and Dwayne Goettel. Recorded across the Atlantic Ocean via England and L.A. with file-sharing software, “Beehatch” dissolves quickly from a peaceful ambient piece into a sculpture of noise and dead-space tones. Phil Western’s duties as a DJ and producer amplify his work alongside Spybey, whose own signature sound alongside Dead Voices on Air and Reformed Faction (ex-Zoviet France) have elevated him among one of the electronic underground’s most sought after voice. Tactile tickling sensations of music collage with tight beat loops and crafty synthetics are but one reason that this album liberates the electronic music world from the tired and repetitive.
” smashes your skull against hard concrete drum loops, techno acid synths, and distorted vocals that could only be heralded by people who have a sinister desire of the dark gothic underworld. The album populates each banging beat with gyrating club-friendly melodies that while harsh are still undeniably catchy. To date Suicide Commando had yet to release such a compelling stroke of genius that was across the board fantastic but “Implements of Hell” does just that and much more raising the bar for everyone else in a very dominated EBM genre.
”; “Krieg” is a body-crushing dance nightmare with some of scene’s bravest and best innovators tapped to revision the music into something distinct and even more intriguing than the original track. The album opens with a bang with Combichrist’s “All 4 One Mix” of “Bait & Switch”, sounding like a rave held at an abandoned east European factory. Then “Strut” is rerubbed by Andy Selway whose “Disco Balls” mix is dirty and reminds one of Lords of Acid. Seismologist offers up a darkened “Potz Blitz!” that bleeds old school industrial dance. Prong grabs their distortion pedals and pounds on your eardrums with their rendition of “Bait & Switch”. Skinny Puppy contributor and engineer Dave “Rave” Ogilvie brokers his take on “Never Say Never” with a mix that’s surprisingly very Yo Gabba Gabba with its sun-soaked synths and pleasant melodies. Other notable contributors are Komor Kommando, Assemblage 23, tweaker, Koichi Fukuda, and Vile Evils (Pop Will Eat Itself).
