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Bipol, "Fritter Away"
On his second album, Andreas Brinkert (aka Bipol) is clearly working in a modern industrial context, but one that is somewhere between the experimental abrasion of the "true" genre and the more popularized distortion-and-drum-machine set as well. The outcome is one that is caked in the dirt and muck of noise, but has a definite beat and occasional melody slithering through.
Like many people (I'm assuming), my introduction to this deep, dank world of experimental and noise music began with the likes of Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, and other artists that became labeled "industrial" with the passage of time.So, I do feel a twinge of nostalgia when I hear what sounds like a broken 808 clicking alongside the buzzing chaotic noise of "In The Name of the Workers," and the junk metal percussion sounds and almost melodic synths only add to that feeling.The rhythm of "My Challenge" sounds like an '80s synth pop track re-sequenced to a complexity the hardware probably couldn’t have handled 25 years ago, and pulls it under a bed of grimy keyboards and indecipherable voices.The result is a dense, heavy mix of sound that is definitely a lot to take in, but not alienating or overly challenging, just complex.
The air-raid siren melodies and crusty bass drum pulse of "Talk About My Scream" alongside vocals screamed to the point of absurdity do feel more in-line with what the kids these days are doing with their industrial music, but the structural complexity keeps it from being just bland jackhammer noise."Confusion" does the aggro-industrial thing as well, mixing gurgling bass lines, broken voices, and drum beats that sound more like kung fu flick sound effects than anything else.Conversely, "In My Hand"'s rudimentary heavy rhythms and careful use of abstract noise channel the early industrial of Cabaret Voltaire or SPK (before either one went the club-friendly route) to great effect.
While the album never really relents, "It Makes Me Sick" allows for a bit of breathing room, even amongst the metal-tinged percussion and brittle synths.The sparse, but heavy rhythms of "The Menacing Kiss" somehow manage to be both abrasive and ambient:it's a whole bunch of noise, but in such a way that it's not fully dominating the mix.The album's weakest link, in my opinion, is "Contest of Devotion."Beginning strong with obtuse steel drum passages, dramatic synth flourishes, and a bit of glitch texture, the track feels like it never hits its stride, as if it’s ready to break out any time into a great blast of electronic aggression, but it never does.
This definitely is an album that commands full attention, because the amount of shit being thrown out at any given time is occasionally oppressive, but never uncomfortable.While some music can be comfortably be playing whilst reading or writing or conversing, this isn’t one of those discs.Instead, the noise and chaos, but all presented over a complex rhythm and structure, are simply too much to ignore, but is well worth focusing on.
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