(07.30.06) This album is seriously rough, in every meaning of the word. Imagine a rotten version of Enduser, corrupted by industrial distortions and driven to the very edge of hard clipping. To get inside such a brutality, you should have at least some familiarity with Ant-Zen or Hands output. “Cavity” waits some minutes before unleashing its whole power, don’t be fooled by the intro that sounds a bit like atmospheric jungle because when the beat starts, there will be no place to hide.
Drum’n’bass drum loops are the heaviest ever heard, there’s no time for micro-editing but only for raw cuts; samples are kept to the bare minimum and there’s always a wall of bass frequencies, very synthetic and really wall-shattering. A nice example of this sick sonic anger is “Spatial,” a running beast built on clashing breaks and razor sharp synths. Edgey often relies on some four-to-the-floor heavy kicks to add some more fuel to the firing beats, this is the case of “Remorse,” “Total Annihilation,” “Fuck Your Format” that quickly becomes a hard techno hammer, while “The Brute” is entirely focused on a steady industrial beat, obsessive acid and a stereotypical gabba sample.
Square Form Annihilations is a step further from breakcore in terms of aural violence, I emphasize this point because even a listener used to Bong-Ra, Panacea or Evol Intent could find this record too extreme, mainly because of the very raw production. It’s indeed an interesting album, but my opinion is that a better mastering would have enhanced the overall quality; for a comparison, take Enduser’s latest Form Without Function with its crystalline sound and the difference will be evident. I suggest to listen to Edgey if you’re looking for the nastiest noisy drum’n’bass derived music around, he’s a wicked producer, and maybe for the future we should expect more polished beats.
Square Form Annihilations is out now on Hands.
