After 4 years Black Lung has returned with a corporate motivation aid, a suite of punchy electronic soundscapes to boost productivity, whether in the office, gym or during competitive cycling. It’s the work of Australian artist David Thrussell, who in recent years has dabbled in everything from film soundtracks (The Hard Word), to label CEO (Omni Recording Corporation) to cynical electro folk troubadour (Snog), to panel member off offbeat discussion show The Star Chamber.
Black Lung is his darker more overtly electronic project, regularly imbued with an overarching conceptual basis for which to understand his bleeps and beats. From commissions from secretive US spy organisations to forgoing his vegan diet and experimenting with cannibalism during the recording of The Soul Consumer, Thrussell continues this tradition with The Great Golden Goal. Offering song titles like “The Business of Selling,” “The Prophet Margin” and “The Cold Call,” it’s pretty clear the direction Thrussell he is heading here, particularly if you’re familiar with his work as Snog.
The compositions are tight electro tunes that flirt with more techno orientated ingredients that keep everything bleak, or at least initially they are, where everything feels squared off and you wonder if Thrussell is indeed creating electro pop for the economic benefit of us all. But as the album progresses something weird happens, the equivalent of the top button being undone and the tie loosened. The pieces begin to unravel, slowly at first with little hints and strange diversions, but before long the ground has shifted surreptitiously and we’re in the elongated squiggly world of experimental synthesis. By the time we get down to “Consumption Deluxe,” the crisp beats have disappeared and been replaced with large slow oscillations and highly textural sequencing. Of course the following piece “Trickle Down Effect,” with its simultaneously taut yet dubby beats blows the argument out of the water somewhat, yet the explosive whooshes of sound that lurk behind the percussion are a world away from his initial pieces on The Great Golden Goal. “We Dream of the Pyramid Scheme” is an analogue electrics sugar rush.
Down here at the bottom end of the album the beats are slower and the structures freer, and as a result a little darker. Perhaps recognising the maximalist bombast that preceded it, the two remixes begin with two minutes of silent contemplation time. And you need it. The Munter S Thompson remix of “The Business of Selling” is a strange kind of cubist funk, whilst Monster Zoku Onsombi offers computer vocals and an over the top techno jungle frenzy.
The list of ingredients on this album itself is impressive and can explain why Thrussell’s electric sounds are so textural and present. The likes of the Buchla Music Easel, Moog Sub Phatty, Mini Moog Voyager XL, Korg MS20, Artuira miniBrute, and numerous others, a salivating mixture between the analogue and the digital. But it’s not the tools, nor even the conceptual package, it’s Thrussell’s ability to transcend and integrate electronic genres and make a cohesive album this dramatically diverse. But then what would you expect from a man who can chronicle a dystopian view of corporate muzak by pure track sequencing alone?
