A collaboration of three renowned acts on this album. Panacea and Needle Sharing have been creating violent industrial drum ‘n bass for some years now, with quite some success. Tarmvred is a relatively new act, which already got good critical acclaim for its intelligent rhythmic noise. On these album the three acts merged their forces, and use each others ‘sounds, samples and ideas’. Nevertheless the songs are divided in tracks by the individual projects, each taking care of three tracks.
As could be expected, this is not easy listening lounge music. Powerful and complex beats set the tone on most tracks. The strongest points of the album are the variation and the intelligent variation of elements. The first track by Needle Sharing, ‘Clicks per second’ is highly atmospheric and subtle, with a lot of voice samples. It is a surprisingly tranquil song, almost with a triphop feel. Next is Panacea, who also starts slow. ‘Mothership’ then evolves with great deep heavy beats and a hiphop-like sampled voice. Tarmvred offers a perfect mixture on ‘Kanyl’ between slow, atmospheric elements and energetic beat-driven passages. The sampled female voice fits in really nice. Probably the highlight of this cd. Another fine track is ‘Faggot House’ by Panacea, with an infectious techno beat. Well, in fact all 9 tracks are quite good, except perhaps for ‘Rasta bash’ by Needle Sharing, whose reggae elements are perhaps a little out of place here.
Normally I am not one of the biggest d & b fans there is. Nevertheless I really appreciate this album, that demonstrates a very rich mixture of drum & bass, noise, industrial and more… especially the frequent alternation in pace works really well. Recommended to everyone with a broad interest in electronic music.
