Emptyset has always been a project that I felt weirdly guilty about not appreciating more, as they seemed like a more cerebral and mercilessly deconstructed twist on the UK's industrial-damaged post-dance milieu of Raime, Haxan Cloak, and Demdike Stare.  Also, I love James Ginzburg's Subtext label.  Unfortunately, all their songs sounded vaguely the same to me and I found all the praise for their architectural inspirations a bit mystifying.  Yet still I kept optimistically buying each new album hoping for a masterpiece that never arrived.  Thankfully, this debut release for Thrill Jockey finally makes everything click for me.  The same general template as always is still in place (improbably dense, ribcage-rattling bass and a slow-motion kick drum pulse), but Ginzburg and Paul Purgas have now distilled it into a thing of truly bludgeoning elemental force: Borders absolutely explodes from my speakers.  Also, the duo now wield a bass-heavy homemade "zither" to wonderfully visceral and snarling effect, which I did not see coming at all.  I am officially now a convert.
We made it to 700 episodes. While it's not a special episode per se—commemorating this milestone—you can pretty much assume that every episode is special. This one features Mark Spybey & Graham Lewis, Brian Gibson, Sote, Scanner and Neil Leonard, Susumu Yokota, Eleven Pond, Frédéric D. Oberland / Grégory Dargent / Tony Elieh / Wassim Halal, Yellow Swans, Dental waste in Saigon photo by Krisztian. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images! |