(07.16.06) This time Enduser keeps sampling to the bare minimum and focuses his new album on the two basic elements of his sound: breaks and bass. Production and mastering are very slick, always a constant feature of Hymen Records’ output, and this means that you’ll hear neither raw breaks nor clipping noises, all the beats are extremely polished, they sound so clear that the listener is able to resolve every tinny hi-hat even in the most furious snare rush. And believe me, there are moments on Form Without Function really close to a continuous hail of drums, like “Hidden Wrath,” where Enduser collaborates with DJ Hidden (an album out soon on Ad Noiseam) and Speaker Wrath (no info, sorry) and it’s like they tripled the average quantity of percussions per second of a standard breakcore track. Even when Lynn includes his trademark minimal melancholic samples, like flutes, piano licks and distant voices, they just remain in the background of a barbarian invasion of rolling drums and hammering bass. So, just imagine what happens in the tunes where there isn’t even the shadow of a musical element: bare bones breakcore in the very original meaning of the definition, a track such as “Final Judgement” shows who is the rightful heir of DJ Scud, Panacea and Shizuo.
“Keep Telling” is supposed to chill down around the first half of the record, but being packed between the aforementioned “Final Judgement” and the thunderous remix of “The Choke” (original by Speaker Wrath) doesn’t help much in relieving the heaviness. The liner notes of Form Without Function tell us that there are many people involved, in addition to DJ Hidden and Speaker Wrath we find also Submerged, Somatic Responses and Silentkiller, but I have to say that I can hardly figure what this lot of artists added to the album. I mean, it sounds very much like an Enduser record, “The Plan” with Submerged probably features more buzzing synths than usual, but the real puzzle is “One Two:” when I first read about a Somatic Responses featuring I was excited, but after hearing the whole track I couldn’t distinguish any significant addition from the Enduser sound palette. This doesn’t mean I don’t like the tunes, on the contrary I think that the entire album collects the most refined and complex productions to date, but I hoped for something more eclectic. Basically this is the same critique I would translate to the next Enduser work: with Form Without Function he indeed reached top form, nobody at the moment can beat him at his game, but after five full albums, a cracking EP (The End) and a myriad of vinyls I feel it’s time to evolve to something different. To be totally honest though, I think I will not miss any future Enduser release provided they’re so intense and technically perfect. There’s a question that has been hassling me every time I pick this record from the shelf: has Form Without Function some connection with Photek’s Form & Function? Waiting for an answer, I’ll try mixing “Final Judgement” with “U.F.O.”.
Form Without Function is out now on Hymen.
