Shivers is a new jazz trio (of sorts) featuring Machinefabriek's Rutger Zuydervelt, though "anti-jazz" might be a more accurate descriptor given their willfully plodding rhythms and murky anti-virtuosity.  What the trio have going for them instead, however, is a distinctive strain of creepy, broken-sounding sci-fi brooding, which makes a great deal of sense for a band named after an early David Cronenberg film.  Appropriately, my opinion of this debut closely mirrors my opinion of almost every Cronenberg film that I have ever seen: an inspired aesthetic and some cool ideas, but it seems like it probably could have been a bit better.
While Shivers is ostensibly a new project, both of Zuydervelt's bandmates have been Machinefabriek collaborators several times in the past, just not together.  Perhaps that is why this album frequently feels more like an atypically heavy Machinefabriek album than any kind of fresh, equal partnership.  There are a couple exceptions though, most notably "Otomo," as bass clarinetist Gareth Davis initially unleashes quite a squawking and howling cacophony over Leo Fabriek's clattering free-jazz drumming before the whole thing collapses into buzzing and humming industrial ambience.  Leo and Gareth take charge yet again on the exceedingly baffling "Rabid," but with much diminished results, meandering along in a sleepy vamp for several minutes after a promising introductory firestorm of blown-out drums, noise, and overloaded bass.  I have absolutely no idea what Shivers were hoping to accomplish with that particular piece, as it seems inconceivable that there is anyone alive who wanted grinding industrial heaviness combined with a lazily pastoral clarinet jam within the same song.
For the most part, however, Shivers' aesthetic is much more seamless and successful, though still somewhat unfocused and occasionally a bit perplexing (the synth-heavy "Brood" sounds like a straight-up John Carpenter pastiche, for example) .  The best pieces are the ones that bookend the album, the most impressive of which is probably the opening "Ash."  Built upon a quivering haze of Rutger's guitar noise, crackling electronics, and heavy synth drone, "Ash" weaves a deliciously throbbing and menacing backdrop for Gareth's eerie warbles and whines.  The only downside is that Leo Fabriek's sole contribution seems to be sporadic drum-machine-like punctuations of snare hits and bass thumps, which seems like a waste of his talents (though he eventually comes in with some appropriately shivering brush-and-cymbal work).  Also striking is the comparatively minimal "Spacek," which locks into a lurching, hollow-sounding groove embellished with metallic cymbal swells and a host of squiggles, squeals, and dissonant keys.  Weirdly, however, it sometimes sounds like Davis is playing in another room entirely and that Fabriek just recorded a cool percussion loop and went home.  It is still quite a fine piece though.
"Replicant" closes the album on yet another high note, as Fabriek locks into a stomping industrial-damaged groove while Davis drifts in and out of Rutger's swelling and crackling electronics with melancholy Eastern-tinged snatches of melody.  Gradually, it settles down into a gently simmering shuffle that would not sound at all out of place on a Twin Peaks soundtrack before unexpectedly surging to a snarling close.  More than any other piece on the album, it sounds like both a legitimate collaboration and a legitimate composition.  I wish more of these six songs felt that way, as Shivers too frequently feels like Zuydervelt pieced together soundscapes from improvisations.  That is not inherently a bad thing, but I feel like this debut could have been better with some more effort, more time, and a more coherent focus (more of Shivers sounding like Shivers, less jamming and less John Carpenter).  As it stands, this is roughly just half of a very good album, but it is a promising start to a compelling vision nonetheless.
 
A collaboration between these two artists makes perfect sense, given how both have carved out their individual niches working with rhythmic sounds in non-traditionally rhythmic situations. Russell Haswell has worked overtly in both realms, and his recent work with power electronics legends Consumer Electronics has him going as far as conventional techno beats. Pain Jerk's Kohei Gomi, on the other hand, has worked mostly as a harsh noise artist, but one of the few that has shaped harsh noise outbursts into ersatz rhythms. Split into two discs (one edited by Haswell, the other by Gomi), this is a sprawling, brilliant mass of sound culled from solo recordings and live performances that stand out strongly amongst both their other work.
Personally, I am more familiar with Gomi’s Pain Jerk output than I am with Haswell’s prior work.Pain Jerk always stood out as a unique project in the often crowded Japanese noise scene due to his penchant to not only work with hyper-speed edits and micro-cuts of sound, but to frequently get "stuck" (for lack of a better term) in short loops that made for excellent, memorable bits of clanging industrial rhythm before dissolving back into an unadulterated roar.This technique can be heard throughout both discs, but he does not overly rely on it, even on his own disc.
Of the two, "Russell Haswell’s Mega Edit" is the most varied and diverse, which is important since his is over twice the length of Gomi's (73 minutes versus 35).Here the electroacoustic part of the wordy title of the set are the most fitting, with filtered radio static and tonal swells that nod back to the earlier days of experimental electronic music showing up frequently in its early moments.Different passages seem sourced from the high brow world of modular synthesis, then back to the dirtiness of guitar pedals. Some archetypical Pain Jerk junk loops appear, but with a different laptop DSP sheen to them.
A junky drum machine does appear about half way in, making for the only traditional rhythmic accompaniment on here, but buried under harsh expanses of squeal and distortion to work as a perfect symbol of Haswell’s two extremes.At times it even drifts into some Autechre like pseudo-generative rhythmic synthesis before just coming apart in sheets of pure noise and overdrive.
On the other disc, "Pain Jerk’s Mega Edit" begins with probably the most peaceful moments of both discs, with filtered static and processed feedback smoothing out most of the most abrasive elements of a noise recording into an almost calming ambient expanse.This is short lived, as I had expected (and hoped), because soon it just becomes a paired ultra high and low frequency blast, like the world’s most annoying hearing test left on for way too long.
From here, things slip more into Gomi’s comfort zone, emphasizing the harsh noise moments versus Haswell’s occasional nod to academic electro-acoustic sound.He relies less on his looping as a form of rhythm and more as a texture, such as the extended, frozen moment towards the middle that, sustained for as long as it is, seems to slip into some sort of melodic mood (but might just be my brain pretending that it is).Regardless of that, he chooses to end the mix on his standard blown out noise style, resulting in an appropriate harsh climax.
Gomi and Haswell had been in touch for some 15 years before actually collaborating live in 2012, which is where the source material for these mixes originated.In performance, the two were using solo material both had exchanged for years prior as their source, so this set is a convoluted bit of solo material-live collaboration-solo edits.Given how strong both discs are, and how distinctive each of them make their respective mixes sound, I would say that the collaboration is a definite success.
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Flame is only Skodvin's second solo album under his own name (following 2010's Flare), but he has long been quite a prolific fellow in both his Svarte Greiner solo guise and as one-half of Deaf Center.  While I do not yet have a comprehensive command of Erik’s entire oeuvre, this latest effort seems like a significant detour from the bleakly heavy drones that I normally associate with him.  Flame is still dark, of course, but it is more of a gently smoldering darkness than a crushing, oppressive one.  More importantly, this is a wonderful album, as Skodvin's lighter touch, clarity, and increased use of space combine to bring his excellent ideas into sharp relief.
Flame is apparently the final installment in a two-part series of albums inspired by "nocturnal Americana" (Flare being the first part, naturally).  While that inspiration did not exactly jump out at me when I first heard the album, it makes a lot of sense in retrospect, though maybe Skodvin and I have differing definitions of "Americana."  At the very least, it explains the occasional blossoms of tormented-sounding blues guitar that sometimes surface.  In most other respects, however, there is nothing conventionally "Americana" about Flame at all, as it is largely a brooding mélange of eerily tinkling piano, dark and subtly dissonant string swells, and unconventional percussion.  The overall effect is quite a cinematic one, evoking flickering Lynchian images of black cars slowly creeping through deserted suburban streets in the dead of night.  Often the term "cinematic" is a polite code word for "music that does not quite stand on its own," but that is not the case here.  Flame creates its own images rather than seeming like a decontextualized part of a multimedia whole.
Admittedly, there are many other albums that sound like alternate soundtracks to Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, or Blue Velvet, but Flame is different, as it does not sound at all indebted to Angelo Badalamenti.  Rather, Skodvin has found his own neo-classical path to ominous and subtly hallucinatory nocturnal atmospheres.  While I certainly appreciate that originality, Flame's greatest asset is its execution: Skodvin and his collaborators (Anne Müller and Mika Posen on strings, Gareth Davis on clarinet) organically keep things at a menacing simmer without ever lapsing into static ambiance or blundering into heavy-handedness.  The best example of this mastery is "Reflections," as an eerie repeating piano motif twinkles with perfect rippling clarity amidst darkly massing strings, demanding (and deserving) my complete attention.  Also, Skodvin ingeniously keeps Flame lively with some surprisingly varied and wonderful percussion, like the oddly timed clapping/clacking rhythm in "Shining, Burning;" the lurching, hollow thump of "Black & Bronze;" and the buried metallic plinking of "Cypress Reverb."  Notably, however, the album highlight (the closing "Drowning, Whistling") works beautifully with no percussion at all, as its drones gradually build to an achingly beautiful crescendo of oscillating warmth with minimal accompaniment.
While there are admittedly a few songs that did not make a particularly strong impression on me, I ultimately loved Flame anyway.  It is refreshing and inspiring to hear something so nuanced, anachronistic, and meticulously crafted in today's musical landscape: this album is a feast of quiet power, attention to detail, appealing textures, well-used space, mood, and effective dynamics.  Also, I always appreciate it when someone crafts an album using people, wood, and steel rather than synthesizers and laptops, as it creates an appealing illusion of timelessness.  Equally importantly, this album was a huge surprise and I love surprises—I always knew that Erik was good, but never suspected that he was this good.  This is definitely one of the finest releases yet to come from the wonderfully aberrant Miasmah/Sonic Pieces milieu.
 
 
 
OOIOO has always created a musical language all its own. Under the leadership of Yoshimi, also a founding member of Boredoms, the group has recorded six albums that have subverted expectations and warped perceptions of what constitutes pop and experimental music. Four years of work went into making Gamel, their bold new album inspired by the Javanese style of gamelan and the first new music from Yoshimi in over five years. Gamelan is an ancient form that has inspired a great many composers and musicians over the past century, from Erik Satie and Claude Debussy to Mouse on Mars and Sun City Girls. The introduction of this traditional form transformed the group into a super tribe, side-stepping the road between the past and the future. Their focus is not to replicate these ancient styles, but to incorporate them into their consistently inventive, constantly shifting musical frameworks. They take their love of indigenous music into an entirely new dimension by freely weaving organic and electric tones into a vivid tapestry, employing their keen sense of color and texture.
While previous OOIOO albums have been largely studio creations, Gamel is the most accurate portrayal of the band's overwhelming, forceful live presence they have released yet. Yoshimi leads her minimalistic rhythm ensemble by making quick, impulsive shifts in tone and attack, the group acting as one mind under her expert instruction. While the gamelan elements will be brand new to many listeners, the band offsets the bizarre with familiar, at times even nostalgic and childlike, melodies. Gamel is euphoric, bursting at the seams with an exhilarating frenzy that is universal yet uniquely their own. OOIOO’s music is reflected in the ear of the beholder, with each listener taking away something different.
Yoshimi began her music career in 1986 playing drums in UFO or Die with vocalist Eye, and later joined him in the revolutionary noise-pop group Boredoms. Her explosive drum performances captivated audiences and even inspired Wayne Coyne to name a now-famous Flaming Lips album in her honor. While the band’s tours of the United States are infrequent, they are as The New York Times has stated, transcendent.
More information can be found here.
For the past decade or so, Polish musician Michał Jacaszek has been exploring a new, resolutely modern chapter in Eastern Europe's long, storied love affair with classical music. His creations are painstakingly crafted collages of electronic textures and baroque instrumentation, harpsichords being swarmed by woolly static one minute and pulled apart by billowing wind the next. A push-and-pull tension runs deep and constant throughout. Ambient music is rarely so sonically challenging. Jacaszek has recorded for Ghostly International, Miasmah, Gusstaff Records and Experimedia and other labels. This is his first release for Touch.
Michał Jacaszek writes:
"When poets and writers declare their enchantment for the forms of nature, they often use musical terms as metaphors. Visual artists' creations often resemble graphic partitas, when recapturing the rhythms of landscapes. Confirming, in a way, these musical intuitions, composers write great music deeply inspired by birdsongs, wind rustlings, waves repetitions etc."
More information can be found here.
This album is about resonance: on Saman, which means "Together," Hildur melts her voice with her cello, connecting the two instruments together. The result is a highly involving and moving album, recorded, mixed and mastered in Berlin. Hildur's sylph-like vocals contrast beautifully with rich cello tones, resolving the tension between light and dark to produce a unique listening experience.
More information can be found here.
Last year's Collected Works Vol. I – The Moog Years was one of my favorite albums in recent memory, so I was very much looking forward to this suite of entirely new modular synth pieces from Gengras.  Naturally, my anticipation turned out to be justified, but the meditative, pastoral Ishi has a radically different feel than its moodier, more haunting predecessor.  While I happen to vastly prefer moodiness to serenity, Geddes' compositional talents and intuitive understanding of both space and pacing ensure that Ishi is still a characteristically enjoyable effort.
All other qualities aside, Ishi is likely to be the most conceptually ambitious modular synth album that I will ever hear, as it takes its name from "The Last Wild Indian," who was "discovered" in 1911.  That, however, was only the starting point for Gengras' inspiration, as Ishi’s story got him thinking about the gulf between our world and life on the fringes of it.  In essence, Ishi is an album about "the man who walks into our world understanding none of it but forced to live in it regardless."  Importantly, that is not abstraction, but a description of actual people from Gengras' actual life.  Given that (and Ishi's own nightmarish experience of losing absolutely everyone he knew), I would have expected this album to be a bit of a brooding and melancholy effort, but Geddes surprisingly went in the complete opposite direction: Ishi is a rather transcendent, celestial, and turbulence-free affair from start to finish.
It is also a rather brief one, consisting of just three songs and clocking in around 35 minutes.  The comparatively brief title piece opens the album with a dreamy, blissful thrum of lush swells enlivened by a bit of buried stuttering amidst the billowing chords.  The following "Passage" does not overtly stray terribly far from that template at all, but it is significantly better (and longer).  A lot of that success is due to the added length, as "Ishi" ends before it has a chance to become fully absorbing–being nearly twice as long, "Passage" does not have that problem.  There are some other notable enhancements to the formula as well though, as "Passage" is also considerably more vibrant, embellishing its heavenly reverie with layers of dynamically undulating, twinkling, and flanging synthesizer.  Also, its bliss-ocean is not entirely pure, as it is muddied by some welcome hints of spacey, retro-futurism.
The closing 18-minute epic "Threshold," however, brings the album unambiguously back to untroubled, oceanic synth bliss, evoking flickering shafts of sunlight amidst a sky filled with slow-moving clouds (or something similarly poetic).  In any case, it is quite pleasant and immersive, though the subtly more divergent "Passage" still feels like the album’s clear zenith.  That said, I cannot emphasize enough how similar Ishi’s three pieces all feel to one another–this album truly is just three variations of "warm swells of drifting bliss."  That is not necessarily a bad thing, as it makes for a well-sequenced and connected whole, but it makes differences between the individual pieces feel a bit beside the point.
All of that, of course, adds up to yet another solid effort by Gengras, but a comparatively minor one that feels less distinctive than much of his other recent work.  While Collected Works had an undeniable advantage in gradually taking shape over a few years of cassette releases, I do not think Ishi suffers from being rushed or from a regression or weakness of Gengras' compositional talents.  Geddes did not make any bad or false moves-he just skillfully made an unusually radiant and edgeless album that is probably exactly the album he wanted to make.  I am still a bit troubled by Ishi's lack of distictiveness, but I suspect that Gengras made a conscious effort to work as purely and egolessly as possible on this album.  Even if I am wrong, it certainly sounds like he did.  Of course, it is always dangerous to hypothesize about artist's motives and methods, so the real conclusion here is this: Ishi is a lush and pleasant album, but those looking for something deeper than that should investigate some of Gengras' previous work instead.
 
A lot of excellent music has come from the recent spate of noise musicians turning beat-ward, but there are a number of comparatively underappreciated and overlooked techno artists like Perc and Ancient Methods who have been producing similarly scary and crushing industrial dance music all along.  One of the best is Berlin's Kareem (Patrick Stottrop), who has reanimated his dormant Zhark Recordings label with this four-song salvo of bludgeoningly heavy beatscapes.  I am not sure that this is necessarily Kareem's finest release ever (people love Druids), but it is unquestionably a seriously strong contender.
Kareem's objective is instantly and admirably clear from the first seconds of The Sky Is Gone: get in; administer a thumping, hypnotically pulsing, no-frills pummeling; and then get out.  The opening title piece makes for an especially bracing, unambiguous statement of intent, as Stottrop weaves a vibrant, shifting percussive assault with nothing more than an omnipresent thump, some machine-like hum, some ping-pong-esque clattering, and a host of well-placed percussive flourishes.  Nothing even remotely melodic ever appears, but Kareem is so deft at adding and subtracting elements to the beat that it never becomes boring.  It also helps immensely that he knows when to stop−none of these four pieces ever drag or wear out their welcome and 25 minutes is an ideal length for such a focused, punishing, and unmusical aesthetic.
The remaining three songs hew very closely to the template laid out by the opener, offering up similarly machine-like variations on its unrelenting beat.  The following "Wildpitch, I Think I Love You," however, embellishes the formula a bit with some subtle late-song synth brooding to evoke images of a haunted factory.  "Divine Hunger" offers up its own small variations, submerging the bass drum, playing up the clattering ping-pong percussion, and enhancing it all with sputtering and crackling short-wave radio transmissions that call to mind an abandoned and remote military base.  The EP concludes with the slower, more skittering "Ligeria," which gradually adds breath-like industrial pulses to build into a slow-burning bit of dystopian sci-fi ominousness, resembling nothing less than the slow advancing of a vague mechanized horror.
If The Sky Is Gone can be said to have any flaws, they are entirely willful: there is not much here that Esplendor Geométrico was not doing 20 years ago and Kareem’s focus is unapologetically narrow.  In lesser hands, that would be fatal (or at least very dull), but Stottrop’s execution is perfect–these pieces work (and work beautifully) because they are lean, visceral, and assured.  Fans of artists like Container and the more beat-oriented side of the Hospital Productions milieu will not want to miss this.
 
Drawing influences from '80s pop, '90s techno, and a bit of more experimental sounds, Profilgate's Noah Anthony manages to be one of those rare electronic-heavy records that is extremely difficult to pin-down as far as time period goes. These three songs encompass sounds from four decades of electronic music, with specific moments that fit into a specific style or genre, but the whole is a much different than the individual parts.
"From All Sides" is rather skeletal introduction, with its rudimentary kick/snare beat lead and fuzzy bass line accompanied by a simple synth melody and a few noisy stabs to keep things fresh and diverse.Vocals are present, but low and restrained, giving a darker, mysterious edge to the otherwise relatively pop-friendly mix."Annihilated" comes together with a slightly less catchy feel, focusing more on a straight ahead techno thump emphasizing rhythm over melody and the employment of various weird noises and the bass line, which is memorable if maybe a bit more dissonant in its overall tone.
The flip side is taken up with the 9 minute "The Red Rope Again," which leads off with a dense, rapid beat that nicely contrasts the overall more subdued mix.A slow progression of analog synth strings might channel 1980s electro, but the beat and production is far more contemporary.The rhythm stays constant for the entire piece, but everything around it evolves and shifts over the duration, with the vocals again kept low and tasteful in the mix.
With synth pop melodies, club friendly techno rhythms and modern day experimental electronic production, Profilgate is a simultaneously nostalgic, yet contemporary artist that sounds like no other that I can think of.Despite the solid 4/4 beat that permeates these three songs, there is a far more introspective sound that is what sets Anthony's project apart, and it is this clashing of style and approach that makes The Red Rope EP so compelling.
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Over the span of a far-too-short 20 minutes, Ritual Howls manages to plow through a variety of styles that all rank amongst my favorites, with a lo-fi level of production that would make any "true kvlt" black metal band jealous. Even with all this ugliness, however, the material is more memorable than dissonant and at times leans into true song structures that are more memorable than what similar artists usually do.
Opener "Turkish Leather" is the most conventional of the three on this tape.Via chiming guitar repetition, fragile drum machine and reverb encrusted vocals, it could almost be a lost, independent-era Sisters of Mercy demo that slowly builds to a fully fleshed out, dramatic conclusion.Appropriately histrionic, yet mired in cheap four track production values, it is one of the times that I feel the murkiness hurts, because I would love to hear what a more polished mix of this song would sound like.
The shorter "Scent of Skin" goes less for drama and more for punk, with a significantly higher energy level propelled by barely controlled guitar squalls and a rapid fire machine gun beat.The aforementioned nastiness helps here, giving it an appropriate level of grime and chaos fitting for the song.The lengthy "Laugh at the Moon" excises even more of the musicality into a junky, old school industrial realm.A deep oil drum rhythm pops up early on, but the remaining instrumentation is all trashy rhythms and shitty effects, but in the best possible way.At times resembling a more fleshed out early SPK or a less syntheticEsplendor Geometrico, it all comes together delightfully, aided by a perfectly distorted bass guitar.
There seems to be an identity crisis going on here, as Ritual Howls jumps between styles that are only loosely tied to one another, but each song is done so well, it is not a detriment at all.While I would prefer to hear "Turkish Leather" presented as a more polished, conventionally death rock song, it is still great in this rawer form, and the two remaining pieces benefit from the DIY production values. My biggest gripe is that there simply was not enough here, as the tape was over far too early for my liking.
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After what almost seemed like a begrudging festival reunion to play Streetcleaner, it was exciting to see that the pieces were coming together for a true Godflesh reunion, and even more so when the likelihood of new material appearing got higher and higher. Unexpectedly announced as a precursor to the upcoming full-length album, Decline & Fall sounds as if it could have been recorded around 1993 through 1995, because it has such archetypical Godflesh sound, which is reassuring to say the least.
These four songs (none of which are expected to appear on A World Lit Only by Fire this fall) rigidly stick to that early Godflesh template of Justin Broadrick's screeching, barely controlled guitar harmonics, chugging riffs, Ben Green's blown speaker-cabinet bass and the rigid, unflinching percussion of a drum machine (which sounds like it is still the venerable Alesis SR-16).There are no surprises or unexpected diversions to be heard, likely because Broadrick has compartmentalized all of his favorite genres into their own specific projects.Godflesh is pretty much officially reserved now for just industrial tinged metal sounds.
I have mixed feelings about this, because I find many of my favorite Godflesh songs to be the ones that push out of those boundaries, like the (post)punk-y Tiny Tears EP, the techno-tinged Slavestate and the glorious untitled bonus song hidden at the end of Hymns.At the same time, though, anyone who followed Godflesh knows the identity crisis that started happening at the hip-hop influenced Songs of Love and Hate into the dour electronics of Us and Them (which I feel, while not perfect, is very underrated) and the straight forward, bland metal of Hymns lead to diminishing returns.
Which is why I pegged Decline & Fall as sounding specifically from that aforementioned timeline, because it was then their sound was most consistent."Ringer" is not far removed from the rock tinged from Selfless, but lacking that sterile, clinical sheen that at first turned me away, and then endeared that record to me.It is a bit less depressive than Selfless, but darker than Messiah and its prototypical groove direction, channeling the aggression that Broadrick had been holding back on the Jesu records.
The hip-hop drum machine shuffle blended with the idiosyncratic guitar melodies and barked/growled vocals of "Dogbite" resemble a further refinement to the sound of Pure, but livelier and more energetic in comparison, and more than a passing resemblance to "Mothra.""Playing with Fire," on the other hand, sticks with the bleak, depressive Godflesh sound that arose heavily on Us and Them, but without the electronics, and an overall arrangement more consistent with the Selfless era and a good pairing of Broadrick's singing/screaming vocal dynamic.
The title song is perhaps where the album stands out the most unique: a frenetic jerky rhythm that bounces between slow to fast with Broadrick’s guttural vocals.The voice sounds like a conscious attempt for a Streetcleaner throwback, but the music itself is harder to pin down, with a constantly changing tempo and melodic passages, but sounds definitively like Godflesh.Both the Japanese Daymare pressing and the digital download direct from Avalanche include two bonus dub remixes, one for "Playing with Fire" and the other being "Ringer".Like other mixes from Broadrick, he sticks with the classic definition of a dub mix, stripping back the guitar to emphasize the drums and bass, extra effects on both and minimized vocals.Neither are essential, but they do give a different perspective on the songs.
The most striking aspect of Decline & Fall is how Godflesh-y the whole thing feels.I was expecting a trajectory more like Broadrick's long-time influence Swans' return after a similarly long absence peppered with side projects, where finding their specific identity took a bit of time.This EP does not have any overt moments that sound like Jesu, or Pale Sketcher, or JK Flesh, or [insert project here]: it is purely a distillation of the early days of Godflesh.If this reactivation is for the long term, as it seems to be, I am not sure how this strictly compartmentalized approach will be.For the span of an EP it works wonderfully, and it is reassuring that Broadrick and Green have not simply tried to capitalize on their past glories by resurrecting the name.However, my concerns are how this very specific adherence to their old sound will be over the span of one or many full-length albums.Given who it is, and how much of a fan I am of their entire discography, I have no problem giving them the benefit of the doubt though.
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