Bronze Age looks to the past and drags it kicking and screaming into a chaotic, thumping, post-industrial present with the début three-track Antiquated Futurism EP, the second release on Fernow’s newly minted Bed of Nails imprint.
[Release page] Bronze Age is a new project from producer Kris Lapke, Dominick Fernow’s right-hand man and manager of the Manhattan-era Hospital Productions label. His previous releases came out under the names Alberich and Northern Cross but he’s also Fernow’s co-conspirator in the Christian Cosmos collaboration, a sort of blasphemous brother of Vatican Shadow. As Bronze Age, Lapke looks to the past and drags it kicking and screaming into a chaotic, thumping, post-industrial present with the début three-track Antiquated FuturismEP, the second release on Fernow’s newly minted Bed of Nails imprint.
Side A’s “Surviving Cultural Impedance” is a full on industrial techno assault that combines elements of Underworld’s speed freak “Pearl’s Girl (Tin There)” with off-kilter pads and heavy-laser fire to create a turbocharged thumper that reads like the adrenalin pumping soundtrack to a dilapidated and collapsing Designer’s Republic Wipeout racetrack.
Things calm down considerably on the flip, however, as the beautifully retro “Coupling Symbols” turns Antiquated Futurism towards old-school Artificial Intelligence series experimental techno and IDM, a fusion of Autechre and B12 that paints a panoramic portrait of a dystopian technopolis, all twisting super-highways and impossibly tall skyscrapers disappearing into wells of dense smog below: think the inner sleeve of B12’s own Electro-Soma.
And finally there’s the more traditional, stripped down, 4/4 technoid beauty of “Model Ingenuity,” with finely honed elements of trance bleeding in at the edges. In fact, the overall impression one gets from Bed of Nails in general, and from Antiquated Futurism in particular is that these are artists who couldn’t give two shits about fitting in with the current musical climate, subverting genres or looking to kick-start the next big thing, yet seem to be accomplishing all of those things in any case, paying respect to the great innovators of the past whilst creating something challenging and immensely rewarding at the same time.
Initial copies sadly appear, not on bronze but translucent orange vinyl, but hey let’s not complain about that—it’s a great pressing from Dubplates & Mastering as always. Antiquated Futurism may not quite reach the giddy heights of Bed Of Nails’ inaugural September Cell by Vatican Shadow, but it sure as hell doesn’t lower the bar, proving that Fernow’s new imprint is going to be one to watch like a hawk.
Antiquated Futurism is available on Bed Of Nails. [Release page]