
Defect Play LP
I grew up listening to Ministry, Meat Beat Manifesto, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Front 242, Revolting Cocks, Pigface, Einsturzende Neubauten, Controlled Bleeding, and well, yeah. I have a real affinity …
Music. Exploring under-recognized genres, albums and songs.
I wanted to start a thing that would’ve given me a chance to give back to a scene that I care for deeply. I wanted to expose stuff to people, and …
Hey, so the thing that I hate about a lot of recent hardcore bands is that they almost to a single band, drench their vocals in reverb, making them a unintelligible …
A collection of releases all in one place and serves as a pretty good introduction to the band – starting off with a wail of feedback and off and running with …
I try to every Record Store Day, sift through the absolute dreck of releases and list what you should and shouldn’t buy – of course my tastes lead me to only …
I grew up listening to Ministry, Meat Beat Manifesto, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Front 242, Revolting Cocks, Pigface, Einsturzende Neubauten, Controlled Bleeding, and well, yeah. I have a real affinity …
I grew up listening to Ministry, Meat Beat Manifesto, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Front 242, Revolting Cocks, Pigface, Einsturzende Neubauten, Controlled Bleeding, and well, yeah. I have a real affinity and fondness for that era of industrial – although I always listened to that stuff with a punk ear. I can say that Defect Play are in the same canon, but no where in the same league. If you appreciate late 80’s/early 90’s industrial, and modern noise, this probably hits that sweet spot between the two.
The release starts of with some purely danceable beats, with some uncomfortable noise – and I could’ve listened to about 10 minutes of that, “Dulled” is an absolute banger of a track. Unfortunately, it’s only 1:58. It’s definitely a lost opportunity, as it has room to develop into something. I can totally see this in like with those Wax Trax 12″ EPs with dance remixes – that would be the song I’d get remixed by Bill Rieflins or someone like that. In fact the first side is all songs that probably could’ve been longer, and developed a little longer. As it is, it seems like a series of songs that were cut short on the one side, and left a little too long on the other side. I admit that my ear isn’t as keen for this sound as it once was, but I don’t feel the drums are forward enough to help propel the songs further along. Maybe it’s the lack of bottom end through the first two songs, and that only appears briefly on “Defective Structures”.
So not something that I would’ve sought out, but I’m glad I came into contact with it and that people are still working in this style. It just feels that this release was not finished, or not quite finished.
Some music impacts you right away like a hammer to the skull, whereas some other music takes a while. I’ve come back to this a couple of times, and it’s divergent …
Some music impacts you right away like a hammer to the skull, whereas some other music takes a while. I’ve come back to this a couple of times, and it’s divergent like a lot of late 80’s industrial was – sampling (quite literally) from several deep wells of western and eastern sounds. This is simply put soundtrack music, but not done in a pretentious “artiste” way, it’s down to earth, maybe even humble feeling. No composition lasts longer than 4:05, and that makes the release move along at a pace that keeps those with a lacking attention span at attention.
I have listened to a lot of different outsider music, I used to be, once upon a time a guy who hoped to become a post-production film audio technician. I did make some interesting music in that role, but found it somewhat dreadful and not at all fulfilling. With that, I can see this music in that context – drawing on bhangra rhythms, bells, and electronic loops to design something different. The hums on “Formative Assessment for the Abstinance Theory of Interest” pulling directly from the noise cannon, but this is not a power electronics release, and those muted references to the tropes of that genre are merely references. I keep coming back to soundtrack interludes, which may be a function of short lengths of these compositions. And that leaves me with a bit of an unsettled feeling – I feel as if I should be seeing something – like the footsteps at the beginning of “Supplier” – I should see the person walking.
So if you like music that evokes images, this one has some clear cues that you can work from. I suspect if acid is your thing, this might lead to something amazing, or something terrifying. Either way, I wouldn’t recommend it, only because I wouldn’t recommend taking acid, but if you did, you could likely do worse. Like listen to the fucking Greatful Dead or Phish.
Yeah, so this is another entry in the “1982 is the Best Year for Punk and Hardcore” series I’ve been talking about for over a year now. It struck me that …
Yeah, so this is another entry in the “1982 is the Best Year for Punk and Hardcore” series I’ve been talking about for over a year now. It struck me that I was playing a lot of individual releases or a select few splits (uhhh, Faith/Void?) but what about the comps? Well, the American compilations are pretty good, but man, the international ones (in a forthcoming episode) are pretty damn hot. Reading about some of these bands are hard because not a lot is written about them. For instance Unaware – not a ton out there about them, but Race War on the Not So Quiet on the Western Front compilation is a really good song… Here’s the playlist.
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How do you really try to understand the newest release by a band that’s been around for 40 years, gone through a radical shift in their sound, but not in their …
How do you really try to understand the newest release by a band that’s been around for 40 years, gone through a radical shift in their sound, but not in their approach to making music? To me, nothing tops the early output of the band, but as a somewhat middle-aged punk, I can get behind music that isn’t full on 100 miles an hour cars on a highway, but the last LP, Lament, was very traditional sounding, and didn’t resonate with me. Now, with that said, viewing this new album from a purely post-punk angle, and turning off my knowledge of their past innovation and sound, I have to suggest that Blixa Bargeld has gone from master of the inward scream to a modern new world crooner, inhabiting a space somewhere between Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave.
I think the leadoff track, Ten Grand Goldie, is better than anything that was on Lament, so that’s a good start to an album. In fact within that one song, you get some of the tropes that Einsturzende Neubauten are known for: the inward scream, clattering rhythms, basslines that weave beneath the surface; but there’s some new elements as well: a looping sample and some horns. From there, it seems the band weaves from trying to reinvent traditional folk songs, to abusing pop song structures; making them bend to the band’s will. I will say that I believe that the traditional folk song style of songs that are on this album are just less successful and less interesting – they could’ve been done by any band. Which robs Einsturzende Neubauten of what makes them special – fans of their early music will want that industrial giant clatter. I find myself challenged by the sequencing of the record – starting at such a high level with Ten Grand Goldie and never really ascending again to that height. While I’m not disappointed, it seems that there’s a start, but no follow up and bringing that tempo back, which leaves an album that wallows a bit. Even the abrasive 1 minute within Zivilisatorisches Missgeschick, which oscillates between noise and volume punishment and subtle soundtrack arrangements really don’t bring the same kind of tempo that might’ve made some sense. Seven Screws builds a crescendo that goes nowhere, but I can’t say it’s a convincing crescendo, it’s almost as if the previous five songs clued me into that it was going to go nowhere. Following up that crescendo with the Leonard Cohen-esque Alles In Allem, is like walking up a staircase, opening a door and discovering you’re at the bottom of the staircase again.
This album feels like a carefully crafted expression of love. Love that starts with lust, white hot and intense, like Ten Grand Goldie, and then love that lasts; sometimes trudging, sometimes mundane. Ironically the second to last song on the album is Wedding, where people often joke that is where love goes to die. Of course, we all know that love doesn’t have to die at a wedding, and can flourish…
This is music that is a soundtrack, but it’s not one that I want to revisit. Much like a soundtrack, I’ll still go see the band, but to see the spectacle, not necessarily to revel in most of these songs which wouldn’t be out of place as background music at a polite party for upscale artsy folks.
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