Powell – Sport (XL Recordings)

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Since he first emerged five years ago with his debut EP ‘The Ongoing Significance Of Steel And Flesh’, UK-based electronic producer and Diagonal Records co-founder Oscar Powell has established a reputation as one of the UK techno scene’s most rebellious figures. While recent 12”s such as last year’s ‘Insomniac’ and ‘Sylvester Stallone’ have seen him continuing to introduce strands of EBM and industrial into his mutant techno constructions to alternately thrilling and terrifying effect, in many senses this highly anticipated debut album ‘Sport’ sees him ushering in a new phase in his musical development.

This album sees him continuing to be as confrontational as any longtime listener would expect, the 14 tracks collected here coming across as frequently deliberately jarring and irritating, deconstructing and playing with the popular tropes of EDM whilst fusing them with a jagged edge that feels more akin to punk than anything else (chugging guitar riffs even appear on a few tracks here). Opening track ‘FIT_17’ gives pretty good indication of what lies in store here, offering up a brief intro that sees redlining distorted synth drones being gradually overtaken by glitchy crackles and what sounds like cables being twisted in their sockets, before ‘Fuck You Oscar’ sees a squelchy synth bassline and coldly clicking drum machines that call to mind Throbbing Gristle’s sludgy crawl more than anything else battling for space with chaotic waspy buzzes and looped vocal fragments.

While it’s certainly funky, it manages to feel on the edge of chaos the entire time, its relentless club-paced loops being dragged to a considerably more unhinged place. ‘Skype’ sees an unidentified US DJ bragging over Skype about his Djing abilities whilst also slamming EDM stars with preprogrammed sets, complete with a listener chuckling in the foreground as digital CD skipping tones judder and flicker, before ‘Jonny’ offers up what’s easily this album’s most punky moment, sending tribal drums clattering against looped and cut-up guitars while a curiously distracted vocal that strangely calls to mind ‘Evil Heat’-era Primal Scream gets fractured and blurred amidst the curiously hypnotic, almost broken motorik rhythms.

It’s ‘Do You Rotate?’ though that offers up one of this album’s most intriguing moments, its fusion of a deliberately lurching and irritating rhythmic groove with Dale Cornish’s jarringly looped non-linear verbal interjections (“what is this for you keep describing’) almost suggesting Karl Hyde if he’d gone thug at points. More than anything else, ‘Sport’ is the sound of Powell not caring about what anyone else thinks, and doing whatever the hell he wants.

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A dastardly man with too much music and too little time on his hands

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