Man With Potential
It's been an amazing year for deconstructed, f*cked-up and destroyed Techno, often emerging from the most unlikely sources. This new album from Yellow Swans' Pete Swanson certainly falls into that category, but might just be the most shocking and exquisitely demented offering of its kind, sounding like a cross between Aphex Twin, Regis, Prurient and Kevin Drumm - with all the brilliance those names suggest. On these tracks he continues to mine beneath the topsoil of the American noise scene into a more delirious, deafening style of bunkered Techno sharing much in common with Prurient's Vatican Shadow. His finest solo side in years, 'Man With Potential' feels to be a logical progression from last year's 'Going Places', exploring deeply routed ley lines of steam-powered machine rhythm and mind-burrowing distortion towards an innately unnatural conclusion. After an introductory acid bath cleanse, opener 'Misery Beat' soon tangles into a primal take on Regis' foundry-beaten 4/4s lashed by howling, demonic noise, before 'Remote View' gazes over nuclear-blasted synth pads and acid-ravaged Tech-noise pulses, and 'A&Ox0' creates an effluent channel of beaten-down bass and acrid, needling noise harmonics. Flipside, the brittle hypertension of 'Far Out' is enough to draw blood from your nervous, chewed lips, while the title track methodically planes any remaining, blistered flesh from the surface with layers of abrasive texture until he's reached the skeletal baroque noise bones of 'Face The Music'. You'll need to brush your teeth twice after this - it's just so damn f*cked.
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It's been an amazing year for deconstructed, f*cked-up and destroyed Techno, often emerging from the most unlikely sources. This new album from Yellow Swans' Pete Swanson certainly falls into that category, but might just be the most shocking and exquisitely demented offering of its kind, sounding like a cross between Aphex Twin, Regis, Prurient and Kevin Drumm - with all the brilliance those names suggest. On these tracks he continues to mine beneath the topsoil of the American noise scene into a more delirious, deafening style of bunkered Techno sharing much in common with Prurient's Vatican Shadow. His finest solo side in years, 'Man With Potential' feels to be a logical progression from last year's 'Going Places', exploring deeply routed ley lines of steam-powered machine rhythm and mind-burrowing distortion towards an innately unnatural conclusion. After an introductory acid bath cleanse, opener 'Misery Beat' soon tangles into a primal take on Regis' foundry-beaten 4/4s lashed by howling, demonic noise, before 'Remote View' gazes over nuclear-blasted synth pads and acid-ravaged Tech-noise pulses, and 'A&Ox0' creates an effluent channel of beaten-down bass and acrid, needling noise harmonics. Flipside, the brittle hypertension of 'Far Out' is enough to draw blood from your nervous, chewed lips, while the title track methodically planes any remaining, blistered flesh from the surface with layers of abrasive texture until he's reached the skeletal baroque noise bones of 'Face The Music'. You'll need to brush your teeth twice after this - it's just so damn f*cked.
It's been an amazing year for deconstructed, f*cked-up and destroyed Techno, often emerging from the most unlikely sources. This new album from Yellow Swans' Pete Swanson certainly falls into that category, but might just be the most shocking and exquisitely demented offering of its kind, sounding like a cross between Aphex Twin, Regis, Prurient and Kevin Drumm - with all the brilliance those names suggest. On these tracks he continues to mine beneath the topsoil of the American noise scene into a more delirious, deafening style of bunkered Techno sharing much in common with Prurient's Vatican Shadow. His finest solo side in years, 'Man With Potential' feels to be a logical progression from last year's 'Going Places', exploring deeply routed ley lines of steam-powered machine rhythm and mind-burrowing distortion towards an innately unnatural conclusion. After an introductory acid bath cleanse, opener 'Misery Beat' soon tangles into a primal take on Regis' foundry-beaten 4/4s lashed by howling, demonic noise, before 'Remote View' gazes over nuclear-blasted synth pads and acid-ravaged Tech-noise pulses, and 'A&Ox0' creates an effluent channel of beaten-down bass and acrid, needling noise harmonics. Flipside, the brittle hypertension of 'Far Out' is enough to draw blood from your nervous, chewed lips, while the title track methodically planes any remaining, blistered flesh from the surface with layers of abrasive texture until he's reached the skeletal baroque noise bones of 'Face The Music'. You'll need to brush your teeth twice after this - it's just so damn f*cked.