Experimental Electronic Music
Tschernobyl serves as an immersive depiction of such a wasteland and as a medium to cement the band’s feelings regarding the catastrophe. Both the music and the various vocal samples scattered throughout feel incredibly apt for painting images in the listener’s head; a sense of melancholy is sometimes present, while at other times the tracks become rougher and much more industrially influenced.
Beyond the Clones then does a fantastic job of morphing proto-EBM rhythms, contemporary glitch textures, and those delightful toybox electronics into this next release. And in so doing, moving between space-like abstraction and grounded abrasions with a physical intensity throughout.
Across eleven diverse movements, SICK STREET displays rhythmic elasticity, aural sculpting assembled from found sound, cellular technology, environmental residue, postcode mosaics, and a restless multiplicity of influence.
Across its duration, A Wave Of Alarm navigates the long architecture of inner turbulence, invoking something akin to a dark night of the soul: a descent into fertile voids where collapse and liberation begin to mirror one another.
For listeners expecting linear progression or clear melodic arc, Tracker Mini Works will feel incomplete. For those who understand that fragmentation and glitchy manipulation can be more emotionally resonant than perfect production, this will feel exactly right.
Ouroboros emerges as a fully realized assembly of extraterrestrial circuitry, endlessly bent, folded, and reconfigured into excitingly unique forms.
Across The Dreamers Of Dreams, Bowman detonates maniacal braindance mechanics, electro errorfunk ripped into synthetic ribbons, and a cut-and-paste sampladelia that early Coldcut would likely have fought over releasing.
tsx and Sue Tompkins have carved out a niche so specific that almost no one else occupies it. recur⁷ is further proof they’re fine keeping it that way.
This is not merely an album about pessimism, collapse, paranoia, or sepia memories. It is an expertly crafted and beautifully sustained paean to the enduring presence of the motion of Goodness—often obscured, often wounded, not-for-profit, but somehow still capable of outliving every system designed to extinguish it. A balm for balmy days and long dark nights of the soul.
Empusae and Maris Anguis have crafted a fantastic album that rewards repeated listening and offers a welcome step toward a more spiritual and cultural focus for their label Cryo Chamber.
Originally published in Melody Maker on May 11, 1996, Mark Roland’s review of Meat Beat Manifesto’s Subliminal Sandwich captured the arrival of a record that would go on to become one of electronic music’s most influential and genre-defining releases; republished here with permission, 30 years on.
