The relentless rhythms constructed from distorted sounds, and the noisy complex nature of the background soundscape seems to be harking back to much earlier industrial music such as the legendary Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. You can almost smell the thick air of a post industrial revolution Northern city as the huge machines from that period grind and thump away.
[Listen | Purchase] Sharps Injury is a musical side project of IDM veteran Keef Baker. Under his afore mentioned moniker, Keef Baker has released a fair amount of music with such luminary labels as n5MD, Ad Noiseam and Hymen to name a few, and has a reputation for interesting and emotive, thoughtful electronic music, full of subtle intricacies and shifting juxtapositions.
This project however reveals a much more industrial/power noise influenced side of (as his mum no doubt still calls him) Keith Baker’s musical spectrum, and almost seems to be a venting of some darker and more aggressive feelings. There are still characteristic elements to this EP that can be recognized as Keith’s style, such as the playful use of tempo changes and the well chosen sounds which manage to fill the audible spectrum pretty well, but the general thrust is much more about dark aggressive sounds pounded at you via equally as aggressive and unyielding rhythms and less about subtlety and deft sonic manipulation. In fact, the relentless rhythms constructed from distorted sounds, and the noisy complex nature of the background soundscape seems to be harking back to much earlier industrial music such as the legendary Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. You can almost smell the thick air of a post industrial revolution Northern city as the huge machines from that period grind and thump away, belching out acrid smoke amid the cacophony of hundreds of other factories all full of similar machines grinding and thumping away. Maybe I’m reading too much into this though, despite the fact that Keith Baker originally hails from Leeds which was one of the major industrial city in the North of England after the industrial Revolution, maybe he just wanted to make an EP of music that is heavy and rhythmic and less concerned with subtlety and intricacy. And that’s fine.
Personally I found this EP a bit ambitious to connect with; I don’t know why this should be, it has all the elements that would usually attract my ears. I was raised on a musical diet which included Black Flag, Subhumans, Minor Threat, Ministry, Godflesh and so on, needless to say I’m not put off by a bit of noise, and this EP has it by the bucket-load. It also has a lot of power and aggression, things that usually sit well with me. Then again, one of the original remits of industrial music is that it is extremely dense (sonically, not intellectually) and challenging for the listener – indeed the Allmusic website describes industrial music as the “most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music.” In those terms it more then delivers.
There is no doubt that Keith Baker is a master sonic manipulator, a brief glimpse at his previous body of work will show this to be true, and if you are into the genres of electronic industrial, power noise or any of the multitude of genres and sub genres associated with these, this EP is well worth getting. It’s the work of a veteran who obviously had something on his mind that he needed to tell us about.
Back From The Dead is out now on Octofoil. [Listen | Purchase]
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